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Hi there,
I often see people speaking about how the big kits from FW are warped / twisted, and need to be heated.
Is it a common thing ?
Like, almost of all their kits ?
Thanks !

Pretty common yes.

Resin curing is a chemical reaction, and generates quite a bit of heat. The heating and subsequent cooling can produce warping.

Nothing hot water or a hair dryer doesn't sort, as a rule. The side pieces of the fire raptor and storm eagle are probably the worst, big enough to generate pretty severe warpage, not thick enough to resist it at all.

They are on my S- list as of late. Ive had a bunch of commissions with them this past month or so. Sky Talons, Necron Pylons and the new bane of my existence, the Tantalus, have shaken my confidence in FW stuff that is older than a couple years. They were jacked up in
a variety of ways and required everything from boiling water to extensive dremel tool usage to get a decent product.

The new kits have been great, the Ta' unar was an absolute joy to work with, so maybe its an issue that will be encountered less as time goes on.

I've never got anything from Forgeworld that wasn't complete Gak... I can't understand how people still support them.

Meanwhile, the only thing I've gotten from them in 4-5 orders that was warped was one barrel on my Sicaran, and that only slightly so.

It seems to be something they're getting better with. My Sicaran only required the barrels to be straightened out and the Legion Medusa went together fine straight out of the box.

I only ordered infantry and infantry upgrades kits for now, and I never had any problem.
This is why I thought only the big kits have this kind of problem.
Are the infantry models warped, sometimes ?

 godardc wrote:
I only ordered infantry and infantry upgrades kits for now, and I never had any problem.
This is why I thought only the big kits have this kind of problem.
Are the infantry models warped, sometimes ?

Maybe I just have bad luck... I ordered the apothecary set, the Red Scorpions command squad, Sevrin Loth, and Tiberius Red Wake... every single one, except most of the command squad was a total mess, with holes that needed filling and everything was warped. I had bad luck in the past ordering a whorlwind turret and BA shoulder pads too.

I bought a full Ta'unar Supremacy suit (with 2x tri-axis Ion cannons) and nothing was warped. If you literally studied it for ages and ages you could probably find the slightest of bends or curves in the multi-driver barrels but nothing noticable at all.
After speaking to other collectors, this seems to be one of their best cast kits to date.

The Stormeagle conversion kit is the actual satan of modeling. Apart from that they've been great in my experience.

Stormeagle owner here. It's gak.

Ok, thanks.
I'll consider this when I buy a FW vehicle.
Good luck with your Stormeagle !^^

My Deimos Rhino was fine.

My Proteus was warped, the engine section was too narrow, and all of the 'flat' panels were concave. They shipped me a replacement that was only marginally better.

My SE is better than this, but not by a lot;

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/507545.page

Have a look at the amount of effort this guy has gone to

I'm not sure why Forgeworld still uses resin, when they can make better kits with plastic then with the resin, and won't have all the warped and mis formed parts they have now.

I did buy a Corax model at Adepticon, wasn't to bad as far as warping or mold lines, but still needed some work, especially on the wings.

 DarkKnights44 wrote:
I'm not sure why Forgeworld still uses resin, when they can make better kits with plastic then with the resin, and won't have all the warped and mis formed parts they have now.

Plastic requires very expensive tooling. Some of the runs that forgeworld does would no longer be economical to produce.

So far as the question about warping, It really depends on the kit, but the answer is usually yes. Some kits are worse than others.

 Ouze wrote:

 DarkKnights44 wrote:
I'm not sure why Forgeworld still uses resin, when they can make better kits with plastic then with the resin, and won't have all the warped and mis formed parts they have now.

Plastic requires very expensive tooling. Some of the runs that forgeworld does would no longer be economical to produce.

So far as the question about warping, It really depends on the kit, but the answer is usually yes. Some kits are worse than others.

Yeah I simply hate resin, for too many reasons... but if plastic costs more to make why is Forgeworld so much more expensive than GW?

Yeah, I can't see plastic being that more expensive then resin, they just made the Calth figures out of plastics and they had resin versions already made and had been out for while before they made the plastics.

I would think if they made them from plastic they could make the runs for their items longer then they do now.

Usually large flat panels or long thin parts are more vulnerable to warping, like the Eldar Cobra's main guns and top body panel.

 Gunzhard wrote:

 Ouze wrote:

 DarkKnights44 wrote:
I'm not sure why Forgeworld still uses resin, when they can make better kits with plastic then with the resin, and won't have all the warped and mis formed parts they have now.

Plastic requires very expensive tooling. Some of the runs that forgeworld does would no longer be economical to produce.

So far as the question about warping, It really depends on the kit, but the answer is usually yes. Some kits are worse than others.

Yeah I simply hate resin, for too many reasons... but if plastic costs more to make why is Forgeworld so much more expensive than GW?

Because resin is more labor expensive to produce.

If GWS makes a large tank in plastic, the cost of development, design, and the molds is probably hundreds of thousands of dollars. Someone worked out that a Land Raider probably costs about $400,000 USD to develop and produce.

The actual cost of the plastic, the material cost, is nothing. It's a dollars worth of plastic put into a machine that melts the pellets, injects the sprues, and then ejects them. It takes a long time for those kits to pay off their $400k investment, they're going to need to sell 10,000 kits at $40 a pop just to hit that at gross. So they can only really do that for kits that they're going to move a lot of. It takes many years for those kits to earn their money back, and one way to help is to try and keep some common elements, which is why the Rhino, Whirlwind, Predator, and so on all use mostly the same kit with one extra sprue.

However, resin is totally different. You have a guy design a mold practically, by hand - it doesn't require a CAD engineer. It goes into rubber and gets filled with resin. These are more expensive base materials, and they are also more time intensive - you can't spin-cast resin very well - look at Finecast. The molds also deteriorate with each casting, making it again more time expensive as the master molds need to be reproduced. However, the cost to bring to market is much less - no complex machinery or development costs. If you might only sell 200 of something, you can still do so profitably.

There are other factors as well obviously (part of why FW is so high besides the basics above is "people will pay it") , but that is the gist. Plastic costs more to develop but little to produce, making it a good candidate for large volumes, whereas resin costs little to develop but is labor intensive to produce, making it feasible to have limited runs.

so.. economy of scale?

 teban wrote:
so.. economy of scale?

No, economies of scale essentially apply to being able to bulk purchase of process stuff, reducing the overall cost of each item/task/whatever.

It is more to do with distribution of cost - plastic is all up front, so is better suited to larger runs, where you're more likely to recoup the higher development costs and ultimately offset those costs, meaning the very small cost per unit allows for significant gross margin.

Resin production costs are more evenly distributed over the lifetime of the model, they are relatively low to begin with, but they don't drop over time like with plastic, so they're better suited to small runs or low sales.

Resin also, currently, has certain tangible advantages over plastic creatively, but as plastic tech advances, this will probably diminish. I seem to remember GW stating they wished to go entirely plastic at some point in the 90s, and they're still not quite there, but it may not be beyond reason that in a few years production costs drop and creative limitations relax sufficiently for FW to go exclusively plastic.

While that is completely true, when you produce more of an item, you bring the cost down. Thats what I meant by economy of scale, but I may not be entirely right.

Either way, You've pretty much nailed it

Personally speaking, I've got around 3k points of mechanicum and nothing was warped.

However, my 2 fire raptors were a pain to assemble due to near on every part being warped.
My lightning strike fighter was also severely warped.

Also, worth noting, my harridan had alot of issues.
Mainly that the plug section for its wings was around 35mm wider than the socket.
Meaning 3 hours of careful sanding then GS to fill.

I've found most solid section kits are fine, its generally long, flat armour sections and barrels that warp.

Tau supremacy suit and warhound were ace kits.

 teban wrote:
While that is completely true, when you produce more of an item, you bring the cost down. Thats what I meant by economy of scale, but I may not be entirely right.

Economies of scale still apply whether we're talking resin or plastic production in the context of GW. They can still probably justify buying in a month the amount of resin many companies wouldn't use in a year, for instance, but, like I said, it's to do with how the production costs are distributed through the manufacturing process which makes one method preferable over the other on a model by model basis, it will all benefit from scale economies when we're talking GW vs everyone else who makes miniatures.

 DarkKnights44 wrote:
I'm not sure why Forgeworld still uses resin, when they can make better kits with plastic then with the resin, and won't have all the warped and mis formed parts they have now.

Because you can't make better kits with plastic, at least for reasonable gaming use. Plastic molds (at least as used in GW's process) have some major issues with minimum feature size, not allowing undercuts, etc. And in a gaming kit you don't want to have an infantry model with 50+ tiny pieces to assemble. This means that resin can give you a higher level of detail than plastic, something FW's average customer appreciates.

Also, plastic kits can have their own flaws. Parts can still be warped, mold misalignment can ruin pieces, etc. GW's plastic kits are only easier to deal with if you're the kind of person who throws them together in 15 minutes without bothering to fix any of the casting or assembly flaws.

 Peregrine wrote:

 DarkKnights44 wrote:
I'm not sure why Forgeworld still uses resin, when they can make better kits with plastic then with the resin, and won't have all the warped and mis formed parts they have now.

Because you can't make better kits with plastic, at least for reasonable gaming use. Plastic molds (at least as used in GW's process) have some major issues with minimum feature size, not allowing undercuts, etc. And in a gaming kit you don't want to have an infantry model with 50+ tiny pieces to assemble. This means that resin can give you a higher level of detail than plastic, something FW's average customer appreciates.

That's more true of infantry rather than vehicles.

When it comes to vehicles I'm sure the main reason FW doesn't use plastic is the set up cost and they probably don't expect to make heaps of them. The detail on some modern plastic kits is pretty impressive, equal to or better than FW vehicles.

Also, plastic kits can have their own flaws. Parts can still be warped, mold misalignment can ruin pieces, etc. GW's plastic kits are only easier to deal with if you're the kind of person who throws them together in 15 minutes without bothering to fix any of the casting or assembly flaws.

Resin parts seem to be warped almost as a matter of course, plastic parts are typically only warped if they fethed up the casting process or someone sat on the box and squashed the contents.

Plastic also doesn't cave and pit like resin does.

In my opinion, it's all a question of what you want to spend time doing.

When comparing Forge World resin (or mostly resin) vehicles to Games Workshop plastic counterparts, I find that I enjoy plastic vehicles much more as modelling projects, because I spend most of my time configuring, building, and painting. I spend relatively little time prepping.

In comparison, for a Forge World resin vehicle model of any size, I spend a HUGE amount of time remediating the resin pieces to get the to what I consider an acceptable starting point for the model. That means, every surface that should be flat must be flat; every gap must be even across the model; the model must be symmetrical where it was designed to be; every barrel must be straight and parallel to others pointed the same way, and so on. In other words, I want all the pieces on my model to look like the one on the Forge World website before I start. On something like a Sicaran or a Fellblade that's like... 2-3 nights, easily. Among other things, it's a lot of putty and green stuff, which has to dry. Then sand or cut back, and keep working on it.

Frankly, most of the time I don't find that fun, because it's not an expression of my creativity. I'd rather spend that same time painting in freehand or weathering or applying decals or detailing. Or, if I want to build, I'd rather be kitbashing or sculpting modifications than fixing stuff that I think should have come to me... better.

At the end of the day, the main reason I buy Forge World kits is because I think the finished product is cool or because I want it for gaming purposes, NOT because I enjoy the medium. But I also understand the limitations of the medium, and that these are low-demand, low-run models, so if I want 'em, I have to do the work

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
The detail on some modern plastic kits is pretty impressive, equal to or better than FW vehicles.

Maybe on non-GW plastic kits, but those seem to be beyond GW's ability to create. If we compare GW plastics (what we would actually get if FW went all-plastic) to FW resin kits then resin has a clear advantage in detail.

Resin parts seem to be warped almost as a matter of course, plastic parts are typically only warped if they fethed up the casting process or someone sat on the box and squashed the contents.

Tell that to my old (plastic) Tau army. Hammerhead railguns that were clearly warped, crisis suit backpacks that wouldn't fit together at all, crisis suit weapons that looked like they'd melted and re-formed, etc. Even when the parts aren't obviously defective GW plastic kits still have huge gaps and mold lines that are a pain to remove. I've often had to spend just as much time cleaning up plastic pieces as the average resin kit requires.