agnosto wrote:Fateweaver wrote:First of all that little "hobby" moulder will not do the same quality casts as the moulders that GW uses. Huge difference between a used $3,000 injection mould machine (that FYI requires minimum of 240V outlet to run plus cooling) and a $375 hobby injection moulder.
The milling machine on ebay WILL NOT do the kinds of milling you need for the kind of cutting needed to replicate a GW mini. You won't get anywhere near the quality of GW sculpts carving moulds out with that so if you want to recast GW models why even bother with a machine that won't even carve anywhere near the quality? If you are happy carving IG that look like green plastic army men just buy green plastic army men.
The moulds are also not cheap. Not sure where the $300 figure came out (someones ass I'm guessing). I worked production with injection moulders and the cost per mould was around $5k for an aluminum mould with cuts not even close to the detail and depth of what GW's moulds would be cut at. I'd say double that figure. That and if you plan to rip off GW and recast their plastics it's going to take CADCAM software and milling software plus a fairly beefy computer (unless you don't mind waiting a few days for your $200 emachine to complete the 3d drawing of ONE figure for ONE miniature) before the milling machine can even begin to cut PLUS you need to know how to use the milling program.
Average joe won't be able to do that. You don't just take digital photos of a gw mini, scan it into the miller, hit go and it recreates a perfect die for molding.
Resin can be cast for a few hundred dollars. To recast GW minis to be even CLOSE in quality would cost more than $10k. Equipment alone will set you back $10-20K and then you'd have to learn the software so that could cost a few thousand for books or classes (and practice materials).
Selling solid, plastic non-posable vehicles that are obvious copies of GW property is asking for a lawsuit and or legal troubles. Not to mention who the hell is so cheap as to want a cheap knockoff made with probably gakky quality plastic?
Pewter is a lot cheaper to make recasts with, so is resin but as stated earlier you can't use a mould used for plastic for resin. For what it would cost for equipment to cast your own copies of GW minis would buy you lots of ACTUAL GW minis. $10K would probably get you 50-60k points of Orks or even IG, including tanks.
Prove it.
I at least did a little research. I've never contended that it was cost effective nor did I ever state that people would resell the recasts re re re.
Some people do things themselves, not because they're trying to make money, but because they just want to do it.
Tell you what, if this ever comes up again, I'll just throw low numbers around without backing it up with anything just like some people have done with high numbers.
Oh noez! You can build a machine at home for $100 and make all the recasts you want for pennies! Such an unsubstantiated statement is just as valid as someone spouting out $30k or $
40k to make one sprue.
It's all academic anyway and like I said, I was just saying it was possible for much less than the rocket-figures that were shooting at the stars.
Cheers.
@MadCowCrazy,
I made my first figure yesterday..a Chaos Dwarf eruption gun.... looks completely unprofessional but it was fun as heck.
So in other words, you will do exactly what you've been doing and not listen to what anyone in the know tells you?
I can tell you that the people saying "add a zero and multiply by 2 or 3" to your numbers are correct. I have a job in this industry, and I have sought out quotes for the project in my signature, the estimated cost for the mold tooling is 20k USD plus. Cost per casting would be about 5 to 7 USD each.
It is NOT possible at the costs you're throwing around. The "$600" for a mold is for ONE model. I.E. to make a mold for a single
IG infantryman or Space Marine, with no options whatsoever, and it will look slightly better than an atari-age video game character. The machine you are displaying for garage purposes would never work for something like this, it simply cannot reach the pressures necessary to injection mold something of
GW quality or better. And the cost for materials is going to be exorbitantly high, unless you can get the cash together to order tons of the stuff.
BTW, production in china is NOT cheaper. That is a common misconception. When I looked into it, actual tooling costs and production costs were miniscule, but the cost of shipping made it almost on par with the cost of manufacturing domestically in the US. It would save me very little money really, and I'd rather just invest the money in my own countries economy, and not risk having my stuff stolen.
Lord Manimal, knowing what I do, I find it hard to believe you could do what you claim. Epoxy molds are great for short production runs of less than 100 or so castings, and perfect for simple parts, but you will not be able to do
GW sprues on an epoxy mold. You could maybe eek out 3 or 4 production runs but the pressure needed will simply destroy the mold.
You are correct that milling machines are easy to access, but the kind needed for making a
GW mold aren't. You need a 5 or 6 axis to do something like
GW's stuff. Those machines can cost in the neighborhood of a $100k. As for aluminum, again, aluminum isn't much better than epoxy (actually I would say they are worse when you consider costs). Aluminum is also used for prototype/short run molds. If you want to do more than 5000-10000
GW style castings at a high quality, you need steel(which is what
GW and most industrial production uses).
And I don't know what you would want with a water cutters. Those are perfect for doing flat/mostly flat objects. You cannot do an infantry style figure on one, and you would NEVER get detail anywhere close to say a
GW tank, not even on the best machines.
Using Sand, Motor Oil, and scrapmetal is all well and good, but again, you'll be getting absolute gak for quality. Trust me, if there was a way for ANY corporation to do this stuff cheaper, they would do it.
Also, you cannot simply melt down sprue polystyrene. It needs to be ground up first, melted, and then there is a chemical seperation process involved (or something like that) to get it back to a usable state, and it has to be HOT to get the liquidity/viscosity needed.
And a 300psi injector will do NOTHING. N-O-T-H-I-N-G. The plastic will harden before it seeps into the details, unless (again) you are doing it part by part, which is simply not worth it due to the time investment.
Although I would also love to recieve an anonymous pm with pics
