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Hard plastic scatter terrain. 8 terrain pieces per pack. This product marks a partnership, with me producing other's designs for sale in the store. Miniatures shown are for scale purposes only.



Available here: http://www.proxiemodels.com/store2/index.php?route=product/product&path=18_45&product_id=91

$10 gets 4 sprues for 8 pieces?

I read it as $10 gets you 2 of each of the above pictured barriers.
So, 4 pieces total.

Looks perfect for Infinity! And cheap too

Ken, since we all know you are literally run out of your garage, can you shed some light on a few questions?

1. How long does it take to design one of those sprues?

2. How long does it take to cut the mold for that same sprue?

3. Would you ever consider running production for someone who supplied 3D files that are fairly basic items like bases, weapons etc(stuff without crazy organic geometry or deep undercuts)?

I'm all about supporting small business, so if I ever need more bases(which I'm sure I will) then yours are a damn good bargain. I also love the modular building, but sadly Sci Fi is not my main system.

I dig them.

I'd also be interested to hear the answers to Aerethan's questions! I thought plastic molding was pretty difficult for small scale runs?

I watched Ken's video about his setup a few years back. In it he showed off his 2 CNC routers for cutting the molds, and his nice second hand injection molder. It's a very nice layout he's got going on.

$10 for 4 sprues. It builds 4 of each roadblock.

I am very slow at things because this is still a part time 1 person operation. I have pestered a couple of guys to help with design work for a royalty.

The design is extremely variable. A simple item is a few hours and I have been working on doing some infantry for what seems like forever. The problem I have is losing interest before something gets done and moving on to something else. Failure is my best learning tool and on the blog there are some pics of the infantry sprue I made last. It is getting closer to being average. Essentially I just sort of tinker around and teach myself how to do this in my spare time. Eventually it might become something approaching respectability.

The mold cutting is also very different. It depends on how detailed it is and also how much material has to be removed. I try to stick with molds where I only cut away the metal for the object. If I have to cut away everything and leave a small piece sticking up, to make a hollow backed part, it requires a lot of cutting. Kind of similar to the way a 3d printing company charges by the volume of the part. For me the time is often based on the volume of metal that has to be removed. Organic small stuff is more time consuming. For this particular part I would guess the mold took about 4 days total. I set it up and went to bed on 2 occasions. I have run 16 hour programs for stuff that seems pretty simple. The final day is getting the mounting holes in place, running cooling lines and getting the ejectors set up. I am redesigning the infantry women to make them one part models and that mold will take at least 3 weeks depending on how much free time I can find.

Regarding running parts for others. That is what I have been doing most but for several reasons I am trying to get away from. Right now I am trying to work with designers to create items for me to sell. If I make stuff for other people it can work out or not. It is very reliant on the clients ability to sell items. (and pay for them). The rates for people going to China make it very hard to compete. I have not completely sworn off on making custom parts again, but it will have to come with some stipulations. I have spent quite a bit of time making stuff that never came close to recovering the amount of time and money invested. I look at it as a lesson. I made a custom part for someone who was going to publish a game and they purchased a total of $60 worth of parts and then lost interest. I made a pocket knife handle for some guy in California, who gave me the wrong dimensions. When I sent him some samples he actually sent me an e-mail and said- "My bad, the drawing was wrong. Can you re-do it?" . So I did because he was going to be wanting 3500 parts a month. And then he dropped off the face of the earth leaving me with 6 weeks of wasted design time and work. This is why I am pretty reluctant to make parts unless there is a pretty good chance it will be worth my time.

I have a guy designing infantry for me and they look pretty neat. We are finalizing the weapons and I am going to have a go at that soon.

I hope this answers your questions. I have been keeping a blog ever since I began doing this that has a lot of info on it about the process. It also has a lot of useless drivel about animals and other things. Just pick your way through and it will explain a lot. I will not link to it because if I do I get scolded by other forum users, but it is easy enough to find.

We don't mind folks linking to useful blogs here . And $10 for 8 barriers is pretty spectacular! I see that each sprue has both barriers on it now. Will pick some up before the month is out.

These look cool.

Have you thought about doing some spaceships? Now that GW no longer supports Battlefleet Gothic, the market for plastic spaceships is going untapped. I'm sure Firestorm Armada and X-Wing players would enjoy having a nice 'generic' PLASTIC space ship kit, too.

Honestly, that is what I'm planning to do with your barricade kit. Space ships.

 alarmingrick wrote:
I read it as $10 gets you 2 of each of the above pictured barriers.
So, 4 pieces total.

From the page:
Description
Pack contains 4 sprues as pictured. Each sprue contains 1 regular and 1 hardened road block. 8 total pieces of terrain when assembled. Parts come unassembled and unpainted. Photos of painted examples contain miniatures to show scale. Miniatures are not included.

Ken from Proxie is also a great guy to deal with, and his prices are more then fair. I bought a small mountain of bases off him around 2 years ago, and I'm almost looking for an excuse to order more stuff from him.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Hey, I didn't realise that Ken was the OP here. Derp!

Here's a link to Ken's blog.

http://proxiemodels.blogspot.com

Looks pretty nice, will probably get a few.

So these are 'normal' polystyrene, like most plastic kits, as opposed to one of those weird hard superglue-only plastics?

They look really nice - I can see Iron Warriors players buying them to use for add-on armour and for general interior decorating

Good useful stuff.

Is there a better pic of your 'gothic building'?

http://www.proxiemodels.com/store2/index.php?route=product/product&path=18_60&product_id=68



With Robotech coming soon cheap 5mm terrain will be popular.

You mean 15mm, right KK?

Looks great! I checked the blog. 64,000 bases!? wow...

Just ordered some of these barriers, will be giving them to the local infinity players (which is a game I'm hoping to pick up soon). It definitely needs a lot of terrain, and these are perfect for providing some cover in open areas.

These look good, and the price is right.

If OP could make some generic sci-fi buildings like the ones that come with Deadzone, he'd be printing money.

--Chris
www.chrisvalera.com

^ Actually if you read Ken's blog he already has, and nobody bought them. Here they are:



Probably more of a presentation/ marketing issue rather than it being a case of it being a bad kit, though.

That's the biggest problem a small hard plastics producer is going to face, making sure that enough people have heard of you and getting enough sales volume for it to be worth the effort.

Kickstarter isn't a magic button either if you're small. PDC barely funded despite making hard plastic sprues for space marine accessories which are extremely expensive to buy as GW bitz (again, something you'd think would sell like hotcakes, but if nobody heard of it, the mega sales don't happen).

@Ken: That's terrible, how often you've been screwed over by clients... charge upfront and have proper contracts! I work freelance and would never even consider doing a month's work without at least $5k upfront.

The Proxie sci-fi buildings are a great value for the money and I think they look good on the table. They're a little hard to put together though because of the butt-joint corners. I like the extra solar panel they come with, some companies would charge Proxie's price for the entire building for just that one bit





The new barriers look good, I have the older ones as well so I might as well get these too

I need lots of stuff for my Cersi Speed Circuit figures to crash and burn into

I'm looking at buying some of these soon, they look great!

 scarletsquig wrote:
^ Actually if you read Ken's blog he already has, and nobody bought them. Here they are:



Probably more of a presentation/ marketing issue rather than it being a case of it being a bad kit, though.

That's the biggest problem a small hard plastics producer is going to face, making sure that enough people have heard of you and getting enough sales volume for it to be worth the effort.

Clearly. I haven't seen those before that I can recall. Now they've just gone on the list. Posts with great-looking pictures like Squig's and especially - Dr Mathias' one also do wonders. I always mention the bases and where I got them from when I update my blog or P&M on various forums like here and Reaper, but let's face it, bases aren't exciting and my audience is pretty small.

The best advice I can think of for Ken is to get them seen more. Stick around on this forum. No-one here minds you pimping your wares or linking to your new products or blog or talking about new releases. It's pretty much the standard, welcomed behaviour for producers. Also, more and lots of pictures of your kits. Ask people to post pics of what they've done with them in this thread. In fact, feth it. I'm asking people with Ken's stuff to post pics (and for Squig and Math to post MORE pics!) of his stuff. We're apparently one of the biggest wargaming forums out there, after all.

I'd post some pics, but I only have bases right now... until I can manage to swing an order for 10 or so of the buildings and a few each of the Roadblocks and Barricades.



...bloody hell, Ken. Looking through your 15mm stuff. It's great for Flames of War, obviously, but scale these up to 28mm and post them here. And get bigger pictures. Ask people for permission to use their images of your products and add those to your blog and store.

http://www.proxiemodels.com/store2/index.php?route=product/product&path=18_46&product_id=67


http://www.proxiemodels.com/store2/index.php?route=product/product&path=18_46&product_id=68


http://www.proxiemodels.com/store2/index.php?route=product/product&path=18_46&product_id=66

Nice pics, Dr Mathias! Although your fantastic paint job on the Dreamforge models kind of steals the show

 Dr Mathias wrote:

Spoiler:

The Proxie sci-fi buildings are a great value for the money and I think they look good on the table. They're a little hard to put together though because of the butt-joint corners. I like the extra solar panel they come with, some companies would charge Proxie's price for the entire building for just that one bit





The new barriers look good, I have the older ones as well so I might as well get these too

I need lots of stuff for my Cersi Speed Circuit figures to crash and burn into

The hirst art bits mix in realy well with thows buildings to boot.

Personaly to me the biggest thing that stuck out in regards to proxie was the amazing deal on 120mm bases from them. $4.50 for 3 is bloody brilliant.
http://www.proxiemodels.com/store2/index.php?route=product/product&path=20_26&product_id=90

What would the 120 rounds be used for? Dreadnoughts?

 lord marcus wrote:
What would the 120 rounds be used for? Dreadnoughts?

Dreads are 60mm rounds. lol This is twice as big. Alot of people refer to this size base as "CD sized".

The 120mm is used in Warmachine/Hoards for the realy big units. Stuff like the colossus, Gargantuans and Battle Engines. Bassicly Warmachine/hoard's version of a super heavy.

They would probably work well with some of Reaper's biggest Bones minis, then?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
They would probably work well with some of Reaper's biggest Bones minis, then?

I haven't realy every seen any of thows face to face, but I'd Imagen yes.

I wonder if Ken could be convinced to make oval bases of similar dimensions to others on the market today? I think one of those giant arachnarok crab-spiders would probably be appropriate for a 120mm round?