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Hey guys,

Basically I already kitbash, sculpt and scratchbuild.
Now I want to resin cast

I am looking for tips/info on whats the best: (for general parts such as torso's, weapons..etc)

mould types

Resins + agents

ive found plenty of information online regarding resin casting, but was hoping someone from dakkadakka with first hand experience could give me a shove in the right direction.

currently im looking at:
Silicon rubber for the mould, but am uncertain of detail levels achieveable. (http://hobby.uk.com/moulding-casting/mould-making-products/silicone-rubber-1000g.html)

I understand casting techniques and all the bits and bobs but i've never cast resin or anything so small. Any advice, links to videos or sites is very much appreciated
Thank you in advance
Solar

http://www.composimold.com/ or its equivelent..

not being certain what you wish to do atm ..its boils down to economics of scale ...
the composimould product is a reusable mould medium that works well with resin ..by reusable I mean if you the medium the mould itself is made from ..ie you botch the moulde build ..redo it ..no loss of mould medium. I suggest a small quantity to practice making molds with till you get good at it then graduate to silicone rtv






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http://www.metalclay.co.uk/oyumaru-instant-mold-moulding-compound/
not sure if composimould is handy on that side of the ocean so here is one equivelent that is

Most silicone casting rubbers can retain fingerprint details left in greenstuff on the original and allow you to recast those prints - so detail retention isn't usually an issue.

Be aware that resin casting is NOT cheap and only usually hits cost effectiveness at around 20 units per mould batch. If you need fewer pieces than this, it's often more efficient to scratchbuild/sculpt each of them. Be prepared to LOSE (as in waste) your initial moulding rubber+resin batch in your trials (where you work out the correct mixes). Rarely will you get it right the first time.

Instant-mould stuff is fine for GS press-moulding. The detail retention is good enough for 40k levels. It's probably the most cost-effective way to do it.

 chromedog wrote:

Be aware that resin casting is NOT cheap and only usually hits cost effectiveness at around 20 units per mould batch. If you need fewer pieces than this, it's often more efficient to scratchbuild/sculpt each of them. Be prepared to LOSE (as in waste) your initial moulding rubber+resin batch in your trials (where you work out the correct mixes). Rarely will you get it right the first time.

Instant-mould stuff is fine for GS press-moulding. The detail retention is good enough for 40k levels. It's probably the most cost-effective way to do it.

Where you state cost effectiveness is hit around 20 units per mould batch, are you referring to 20 units per individual mould created or per mould mix (ie - 2 moulds creating 10 units each). I am interested in your views on its cost effectiveness. As one of the primary reasons I am looking to get some casting is in order to cast

general torso's for building and sculpting onto

Larger/heavy weapons (due to costs of buying them separate from box sets is pretty high)

Wheels - for combining with scratchbuilt truckks/battlewagons

I was under the impression that the inital setup costs (including failures and trials) would obviously be reasonably high. But that once I had gained some experience that it would be much more cost effective.

To put it into some perspective - Currently I am taking regular ork boys and converting them up into the other units (for pleasure and orginality in looks), So this means boyz --> lootas/stormboys/burnas/bikers...etc...
So the boys are recieving a fair amount of work in order to alter their looks and I was thinking resin casting a simplistic torso would save me having to buy continuous packs of 11 boys.

Platinum cure silicone is what you want for mould-making, and detail that can be achieved is insane. I made a first test mould recently. Screwed up some element of it, but trial and error was expected. I tapped the hell out of the setup for the first few minutes of curing and I got no bubbles in the detailing on the mould, even though the silicone above the detail looked like a see-through Aero bar!

A mold for a regular human sized figure costs me about $3 in materials and takes about an hour of hands on work to create (bit less than an hour...but not much).

Each cast costs me about 25 cents in materials and requires about 15 minutes of hands on work.

Larger molds do not normally increase the time when casting, though they do increase the time related to making the molds. For example a mold with 5 figures on it might take 3 hours to complete, but will still only take 15 minutes to cast. Costs for the mold or the casts tend to increase in a linear manner (up until you are dealing with big things llike vehicles).

Generally speaking it takes me about 10 hours to create a master from scratch for a human sized figure. It also takes about 50 cents worth of putty.

If I use a dolly, that drops to about 5 hours and probaly 10 cents worth of putty. If I am coverting an existing miniature (i.e. - already dressed and mostly detailed, but changing poses, heads or weapons) it takes about an hour and a negligible amount of putty. Add into that the cost of the dolly or base figures.

I generally will create a mold and cast things if I go over 10 of the same figure (or close to the same figure), as well as for things that I want to be uniform (factory made items like weapons and what not).

You will need to determine your own cutoffs based on how you value your time and what in particular you want to create. Buying torsos from a third party may be more cost effective in that light than casting your own.

I once looked at resin casting to replicate scratch build pieces for my army. But i realized that non of those pieces would be needed in an amount that casting them would be efficient.

General torso can probably be press-molded with a simpler 2 piece press mold as you don't need crisp details if you want to convert them afterwards. Even a two piece GS pressmold works and gives you decent details. WIth instant mold it would probably be better.

Wheels will probably work the same way as they are not a centerpiece of your models and don't need to be that detailed.

And casting only for the heavy weapons is probably not cost efficient. Especially orks would look better with differnt looking orky weapons. As long as you have the time you can scratchbuild those guns from plasticard to get a bigger variation.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:

Snip

Thanks for such a good breakdown. Gives me a good start to look at my own costs.

Im not really bothered by the amount of hands on time - As I enjoy the stuff. I think I will simply give it a go and see how it works out. I can then do a cost breakdown. I had an idea of perhaps then, taking an ork torso removing/filing down the details and leaving a base shape (perhaps leaving the coat and such for ease) then creating a mould from this master. Then I can use the resin casts to create my bodies. Or would scratch building at this point just be way more time/cost effective I wonder :/ hmm.

While you might consider that you enjoy the "stuff" in abstract, after you have spent a weekend pouring, measuring, mixing, degassing, casting, demolding the same stuff to get enough parts for an army's worth of figures...the enjoyment for the "stuff" becomes less and less.

Even with sculpting work, to create a dozen or so different poses in order to make an army look sufficiently varied...it tends to wear you down after the 4th or 5th figure with a different set of arms or a different position on the legs.

I have generally taken to designing a 3D model and rigging it on my computer. Posing it a dozen or 3 different ways and then having those printed out by a cheap printing firm and then cleaning up the prints and detailing them. Time wise it ends up being somewhere between a simple conversion and a sculpt using a dolly (maybe 2 hours time). The print quality doesn't have to be exceptionally good - as I am mostly just using it to form the bulk of the figure and deal with proportions and what not. Each figure from a company like Shapeways printed for that purpose costs me maybe $5 or so depending on the particulars of the figure.

Although those prints are not suitable for molding right out of the box from them - they are a starting spot that allows you to get to work on the detailing without building up a figure from a wire armature and you can also see various issues with poses before hand that can crop up after you have spent a few hours working on a figure.

Also - what you are describing would be looked upon as most as recasting...so, that brings other issues.

Look at www.resinaddict.com for some more help

 btldoomhammer wrote:

And casting only for the heavy weapons is probably not cost efficient. Especially orks would look better with differnt looking orky weapons. As long as you have the time you can scratchbuild those guns from plasticard to get a bigger variation.

That is very true and was one of my larger concerns. I definitely like having my orks running as many custom looking guns as possible, even if they are small edits. I will have a look into 2 part GS casting then for torso's. I've never tried GS sculpting a whole model as such, I tend only to GS extras or clothing, But a GS mould for the base torso could be very efficient.

I was just thinking a couple hours ago I could even scratchbuild torso's reaonsably easy (in thought) through the use of cut up sprue. With perhaps 4 lengths cut for the upper torso (ork) and shorter for the lower half. To give a block base shapes I can then GS over the top of. I think this would be a very cost effective method If i can manage it - As I have a metric gak ton of sprue

 LadyCassandra wrote:
I've been considering perhaps going to resin casting for some of my converted daemons... mostly because my base for the darlings are the diaz seekers and the metal horrors from the last edition. Obviously, these are difficult to get ahold of these days (eBay is the only place doing it, and 90% of the diaz models are recasts anyway, and not in the lighter, easier to work with resin) so I was considering casting up my converted models to bulk out my army, as CD seems to have skewed heavily towards hordes.

What sort of can o' worms would I be opening up here? I have no intentions of selling any of the casts on, only in replicating my conversion work of OOP models (mostly because the new ones look stupid). As the Diaz models regularly go for £10 each on eBay and I heavily convert the Horrors (I have 22 all done, so there's plenty of poses), I'm not sure even with the high cost of setting up the resin casting it won't be a good idea.

Thoughts?

Well recasting models that are oop is still illegal. So you'd better be silent and don't ask stuff like that here. Probably nobody will sue you for a few models or even notice them once painted but dakkadakka is open to public and talking on illegal stuff is a no-go.
And i personally would never do it.


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Solar Shock wrote:


That is very true and was one of my larger concerns. I definitely like having my orks running as many custom looking guns as possible, even if they are small edits. I will have a look into 2 part GS casting then for torso's. I've never tried GS sculpting a whole model as such, I tend only to GS extras or clothing, But a GS mould for the base torso could be very efficient.

I was just thinking a couple hours ago I could even scratchbuild torso's reaonsably easy (in thought) through the use of cut up sprue. With perhaps 4 lengths cut for the upper torso (ork) and shorter for the lower half. To give a block base shapes I can then GS over the top of. I think this would be a very cost effective method If i can manage it - As I have a metric gak ton of sprue

GS pressmolds aren't the best out there. If you want to do it without loosing too much details you'd probably look into instant mold ( advantage of reuseability) or blu stuff(better and sharper details)

And if you wanto to be even more cost efficient use cheaper putties like milliput standard. Dependng on availability is is only 1/4 of the price of GS and due to be not as rubbery it takes details much better as GS do in terms of pressing it into molds.

A few ground rules on casting:

1. Yes, personal use recasting is still illegal. Those who say otherwise have their heads in the sand and are usually people who don't even do it, nor do they fully understand the RISK.

2. Yes, recasting converted pieces may constitute copyright infringement depending on the nature/extent of the conversion. If you took a space marine body, and COMPLETELY covered it and redetailed it so that none of the original elements remain, you are fine(basically you'd just be using the original piece as a base or framework). If you just added a skull to a GW shoulder pad, apparently you'd be OK so far as the copyright office has said the shoulder pad by itself isn't copyrightable.

3. Understand the RISK. Recasting for personal use has about the same risk as people who don't report out of state sales tax on their returns each year. Yes it is technically illegal. The odds of you getting caught however(unless you are posting proof of such actions) are virtually nill. IF you recast a piece, don't say it's a recast, and don't show it in an obviously recast state(bare white resin).

I recast a few different items for a few different reasons(mostly OOP stuff, others on principle), but I don't post pictures of those recasts in their natural state, nor do I post pictures of anything and claim them as recast. If you do it right, no one will ever know, which is what you want.


That said, I don't suggest it at all. The gain is rarely better than the effort.

Now if you have original pieces that you want to recast, then I'd suggest having someone make the molds for you and possibly also do the casting, as it can be an expensive process to learn.

In the interest of completeness, I hate toxic stuff with a passion, so I'll likely never do this. But I wanted to know what the legal circumstances would be like if I did.

It is a huge pity that GW removed the Diaz sculpts, despite there still being a huge demand for them from the moment they dropped them, partly because they replaced them with the most clunky horrible looking things I've ever seen. If they brought the Diaz daemonettes back as Finecast Collector's Edition or whatever I'd snap them up faster than you could say "Crying Bank Manager", and a bunch of the Seekers too. The Horrors are not so much of a problem, they're not as difficult to get a hold of and they're not as swarming with re-casters, only problem is that I've done a huge amount of conversion work on them.

 btldoomhammer wrote:
Well recasting models that are oop is still illegal. So you'd better be silent and don't ask stuff like that here. Probably nobody will sue you for a few models or even notice them once painted but dakkadakka is open to public and talking on illegal stuff is a no-go.
And i personally would never do it.

I'm not sure about the first part. Isn't the law as I understand it defined as specifically based upon either the copyright basis (i.e, it's their models so don't just copy them and sell them on), or as something that would hurt the producer of the model in sales (if you cast these models, ergo you won't buy them)? Since they are for my personal use only, the copyright section is void. Since the models are OOP, I literally cannot give the manufacturer my money for them, as they don't make them any more. My other option is to buy from eBay, who are almost certainly re-casters, thus helping them break the law, profit from it AND pay ridiculously overblown prices for the privilege. I'm really not sure what would be the right thing to do in this instance.

The idea of GW suing someone for recasting their OOP models which they no longer sell, and doing it only for personal use is a bit amusing. I'm not saying they wouldn't, but they'd have to be pretty insane to do so. "I know we don't sell it, but we used to and we don't want you to get the service we decided to stop providing!"

The other thing is that I want to convert the Diaz daemonettes, and resin is so much easier to do that. Specifically, I want to take off the claws and replace them with Wych arms (making them the same as the Seekers with the daggers and armour). As some of the models have the claw melded to the leg, that means sawing it off and resculpting the detail. I can do that, but it's so much easier in resin.

Maybe I should buy a box of the relevant unit each time? I actually already bought a box of Daemonettes just for bitz and a box of Seekers for one Seeker body for my mounted Herald. I won't use them apart from that, because they're fugly models, but if I stapled the receipts to my army list perhaps it'd all be okay?

UK law is very different from US law concerning copyright.

In the UK, models are covered under Design law, which only protects them for a short period before anyone can make them.

In the US, models are currently treated as "art" and as such are afforded copyright. Copyright is exactly that, the rights to create ANY copy, or to distribute said copy.

Personal use/resale doesn't matter in the US at all.

Copyright holders have every right to discontinue a product and prevent more from being made, as it is their IP. Some companies do this to intentionally control the value of a product(Disney being one).

Disney taking Little Mermaid off the shelves does not grant you the right to pirate it it because "Buying it isn't an option".

Again, the risk is low for personal use, but you CAN still be sued, and you would likely lose such a case if you wrangled up enough money to fight it at all.

DakkaDakka is not the place to encourage illegal practices.