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I think the worst I had was my Castellan Crowe. No bubbles, just looked like he had been half melted. Everything was was sagging and deformed.

I just started painting a finecast techmarine.
I hate it. I so fething hate it.
It's not the flash that's basically impossible to remove/see until you put different paints on it.
It's quite well cast I'd say, no bubbles,no major deformities and the like...
It's the rough finish the entire finecast minature has. Bobs, crevices, folds... It's driving me MAD! Feels like there is no clean surface on the damn entire thing. Just about everything feels somewhat unclean, dirty and... not polished.

This, paired with the insane level of detail and sometimes impossible to reach places make wanna SMASH. I'm convinced there is a special place in hell where you paint Techmarines for all eternity.

Talys wrote:
The resin for Finecast is different from FW resin -- I read a theory somewhere that on reason was to make the dust (from filing, for instance) non-toxic.

This is not true. FW resin (and any other resin) is non-toxic. The components that go into making resin are bad, but the final result is safe. The issue with resin dust is that ANY fine dust is bad for your lungs. This includes wood dust, plastic dust, etc. It's not a big issue if you're just dealing with small amounts from the occasional model, but you should wear a dust mask if you deal with fine dust frequently or for long periods of time.

The real reason for using finecast instead of real resin is almost certainly cost. Finecast is probably cheaper than real resin, and the 12 year olds begging their parents for space marines don't care about a few bubbles on a model that will be badly assembled and never painted. The extra profit margin on milking that cash cow was supposed to be enough to offset the lost sales and constant replacement kits from the minority who do care about the quality of their models.

 troa wrote:
I've had a couple issues...And gotten them promptly replaced for non-issue models. That's off a good 20 or so models. Overall quality is perfectly fine. Ranting is great, but it's just that, ranting.

Hey, I'm glad you've had good experiences, but that doesn't invalidate the experiences of others and the frustrations those have engendered. It also would seem, from the anecdotal evidence that piles up on these threads, that you're in the minority, so go buy a lottery ticket or something because you're clearly very lucky.

I daresay our 'ranting' (way to be dismissive with your phrasing, by the way) is a communal way of reconciling poor finecast experiences with the time and money they demanded, re-assuring each other that it's not just us getting the gakky end of the stick and reinforcing the will not to engage with this sub-standard material in the future.

 Thairne wrote:
I just started painting a finecast techmarine.
I hate it. I so fething hate it.
It's not the flash that's basically impossible to remove/see until you put different paints on it.
It's quite well cast I'd say, no bubbles,no major deformities and the like...
It's the rough finish the entire finecast minature has. Bobs, crevices, folds... It's driving me MAD! Feels like there is no clean surface on the damn entire thing. Just about everything feels somewhat unclean, dirty and... not polished.

This, paired with the insane level of detail and sometimes impossible to reach places make wanna SMASH. I'm convinced there is a special place in hell where you paint Techmarines for all eternity.

THIS. This is one of the reasons that I dislike the material. Having finished my LOC I've noticed that nearly every single aspect of the hemming on his sleeves is distorted. And there's like as not no way I will have this fixed if I go through 100 of the sucker.

I hate resin in general. FW resin is better... but not that much better. I've gotten so many bad and flawed models from FW. I'll take plastic or even metal over resin any day of the week.

 Eilif wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Shenloanne wrote:
Getting a new one from customer support isn't really an option because it's anything that's a rounded small part of the model is like it's burst. the same with the talons. they're all completely blunted like a bubble has escaped through it. it's something I've never once seen in plastic.

At least I'll be going down the route of gettin counts as for a thirster and kos.

I'm not sure why what you describe would preclude you getting a new one from customer support?

Agreed. I'm no GW fan, but it's widely agreed that customer service for broken and incomplete models is one of the things that GW consistently does very well.

Why wouldn't you at least try to get them to send you a new one? Most every story I've heard, GW hasn't even required folks to mail in the flawed example.

The issue is that I would have to go through them ad nauseum in order to get one that is perfect. Kairos for example is 9 or ten parts. I wager that I'd need 10 of him just to get the parts that make him up to be perfect. The LOC is more or less the same. 90% of the model is well cast, the wings on both for example are FLAWLESS but it's the other parts, generally speaking anything that has a spiky edge that is completely ruined.

I understand GW Customer support is second to none, but it's not customer support's fault that I'd require ten copies of a model to get enough parts to build one model correctly. It's the material that I have beef with and I do not see there being a fix to this any time soon.

There's also the issue of delivery time, especially in countries like where I live in where we don't have GW stores and almost anything sent to us will reach me in more or less a month. Imagine waiting for a finecast replacement for a month, only to have the replacement be just as flawed as the original (or flawed in a different way), and you have to call them again to ask for one, and you have to wait again for a month.

Meh, I'd still say ask for a new one. If you get one that meets your specs, then you're set, if not just resell it. You won't know until you try.

Yeah but after one purchase i'll never risk buying one again. One month of waiting for uncertainty is too much of a hassle.

If they did resin properly these things wouldn't happen the problem is its really expensive to do them properly. you need a vacuum chamber and air moulding environment and all that so you know if they did it right it'd be ok, but still end up with bendy swords I'm afraid. To be fair they chose the wrong resin really. I know this for I am a materials scientist and engineer

 moogleman94 wrote:
If they did resin properly these things wouldn't happen the problem is its really expensive to do them properly. you need a vacuum chamber and air moulding environment and all that so you know if they did it right it'd be ok, but still end up with bendy swords I'm afraid. To be fair they chose the wrong resin really. I know this for I am a materials scientist and engineer

I'm not so sure that all the evils would be cured. One of the reasons I stopped buying resin was that too often, items that should be straight (like staves) come bent, and they are seemingly impossible to permanently straighten. I mean, I can warm them up and straighten them, but after time, they seem to bend back. I'm pretty sure they left the mould ok, and got bent while in the packaging; but stayed bent for a very long time. I suppose, I have never tried warming something up and leaving it in a vice for a few days to "set" it... but meh... that would be too much work to get a straight sword or staff anyhow.

At the end of the day, I just think that any single model over $15 should be made out of the easiest, most enjoyable damn material to work with!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Eilif wrote:

GW is betting that alot of folks will though. That's why there are so many all plastic characters coming out. Many of them (or units similar to them) were formerly in finecast and/or metal, and quite a few of which are now 20+ bucks. It does look like GW is phasing out resin the same way they phased out metal. I'll bet in 5-10 years everything will be plastic.

As for the felt value of metal, I'm right there with you, though I think there are some good points of metal besides it's totemic value and heft.
-It is actually worth more as a substance.
-It is the most reliably strippable material, so you're not risking breakage or loss of value if you mess up a model.
-Because of the above, it tends to have a much better resale value.

Yeah, I hear you. I just blink in incredulity when I see a $25 plastic space marine, though.

To add to your list, which I absolutely agree with:

- If you mess up painting a part of a metal model, like the face, you can fix it by stripping that area only -- carefully with a tiny bit of acetone on a paintbrush, and then using brush-on primer.
- It's not only the most reliably strippable material, it's by far the easiest to strip
- Metal is much more durable, period.
- The manufacturing cost of plastic is supremely cheaper, and we all know it.

On the plus side, multipart plastic gives some types of detail not achievable with the way most metal models are cast. For instance, many GW models will use a separate part of a robe or pelt, allowing both sides of the covering and then the character behind. The metal casts will usually have a solid robe that doesn't show an bits behind, and if you look from the bottom, there's just a hunk of solid metal with no detail. In some cases, this simplifies things, but rarely will the finished product look better, and occasionally (like with a tabard), the design is significantly inferior. Obviously, there are metal models with many parts too, but you don't really see things like clothing separated out.

Talys wrote:

 moogleman94 wrote:
If they did resin properly these things wouldn't happen the problem is its really expensive to do them properly. you need a vacuum chamber and air moulding environment and all that so you know if they did it right it'd be ok, but still end up with bendy swords I'm afraid. To be fair they chose the wrong resin really. I know this for I am a materials scientist and engineer

I'm not so sure that all the evils would be cured. One of the reasons I stopped buying resin was that too often, items that should be straight (like staves) come bent, and they are seemingly impossible to permanently straighten. I mean, I can warm them up and straighten them, but after time, they seem to bend back. I'm pretty sure they left the mould ok, and got bent while in the packaging; but stayed bent for a very long time. I suppose, I have never tried warming something up and leaving it in a vice for a few days to "set" it... but meh... that would be too much work to get a straight sword or staff anyhow.

At the end of the day, I just think that any single model over $15 should be made out of the easiest, most enjoyable damn material to work with!

depends on the company, and the amount of volume they are trying to move, in my experience...
Studio McVey Limited Edition resins, the short lived Rackham Legends LE resins (right before Rackham went under), CMON LE resins, and Figuralia LE's are the most beautiful, perfect pieces i have in my collection...
they are very small runs, and each cast with care and patience...

Ilyad minis were almost perfect...
there were a few boo-boos here and there, but they upped the numbers on what they were moving compared to LE runs...

Forge World makes a lot of product, and the results show...
sometimes you get lucky, and sometimes you crap out and have to get a replacement...

i am about to receive my first Finecast minis for a commission project, and i am not looking forward to it:(...
i hope i get lucky, for the clients sake, and don't have to wait a month for replacements...
fingers crossed...

personally, i'm a huge fan of good resin, and proper plastic, but still love my metal minis, too...
i am sad to see restic becoming so prevalent, but proper plastic is a huge investment, and the price of metal is always rising...
it's a tough choice all around for companies to make these days...

cheers
jah

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I've never seen a Finecast model that didn't have apparent defects in box. I stopped looking soon after the launch and decided never to buy any. If enough people took the same approach, there wouldn't be any Finecast any more.

Funnily enough, the Finecast name has been quietly dumped because of the bloody awful reputation it has acquired.

See, that's weird, because I've only ever seen a couple of Finecast models that were of worse quality than other spincast or "hard" resin products, from GW or other companies. Now fair enough, those couple of examples were absolutely fething atrocious, and one would have to assume that whoever was working the QC line the day they were packed was a blind, drunk, syphilitic half-man half-moron to think "yeah, that'll do", but frankly I think a lot of the dislike for Finecast is a mix of preconceptions formed by the internet banter and confirmation bias - I've seen folk turn their nose up at a Finecast model with genuinely tiny insignificant defects and mere hours or days later praise another company's resin model with almost missionary zeal despite the fact the cast is of similar or substantially worse quality.

And if the name has been "quietly dumped", they have a funny way of going about that; "Citadel Finecast" is right there on the packaging.

Lord knows GW deserve a lot of crap for a lot of issues, but I've got a few Finecast models on my desk right at this very moment and they're as flawless as any resin cast can be, and they were bought "blind" from the webstore so it's not as if I went through loads of packages to find "the good one". I absolutely agree with the idea that people should stop buying an inferior product to encourage the company to change, but in this case they have done as far as I can tell - the QC works as often as any GW QC works, so if you buy GW product at all that's not a rational basis to refuse to buy Finecast; the material seems to my subjective assessment to be a bit harder and more stable than it was at the outset, on par with other companies' spincast resin models; the cleanup time gets brought up a lot, but considering how long GW's metal models that anti-Finecast folk like to swoon over took to clean up, bend, pin, and gap-fill there's an element of rose-tintery going on in that objection.

If a person doesn't like spincast resin, that's none of my business, it's entirely a matter of preference in the same way I prefer any resin to fannying about with metal, but the way a lot of folk claim that GW's spincast resin is somehow uniquely bad just doesn't stack up - it did at launch certainly, but not now.

i don't get the dislike of metal...
every material, for me, takes the same amount of prep work, and gets the same amount of pins...

the detail of metal is slightly better than plastic, but neither of them compare to the exquisite detail that comes out in a well cast resin mini...
now if you want to compare a hard resin from Forge World to a softer spincast resin from GW, i'll take the hard resin every time...
given the choice between an old version of a mini in metal, or a new version in Finecast ( i.e. Astorath, Ulric, or any of the character minis that got the switch), i always go for metal...

honestly, i would never buy a Finecast mini for my own collection, because i prefer metal way more...
this is not rose-tintery, as i work with metal right now...
it's not as if it is something that has ceased to exist, and we are dreaming of the good old days...
i have a metal Thunderfire Cannon sitting on my desk that went together with no problems, and that is one piece that people always complained about...

the dislike of metal really baffles me...

cheers
jah

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I've never seen a Finecast model that didn't have apparent defects in box. I stopped looking soon after the launch and decided never to buy any. If enough people took the same approach, there wouldn't be any Finecast any more.

Funnily enough, the Finecast name has been quietly dumped because of the bloody awful reputation it has acquired.

See, that's weird, because I've only ever seen a couple of Finecast models that were of worse quality than other spincast or "hard" resin products, from GW or other companies. ...

And if the name has been "quietly dumped", they have a funny way of going about that; "Citadel Finecast" is right there on the packaging.

...
.

Our experiences differ in regards to Finecast and other resin casts. I have had plenty of perfect resin models from other companies though I think they are usually poured resin rather than spincast.

As for the name, if you go on the GW webstore and search for Finecast, or look up a known Finecast model -- for example the Tau Sniper Drone -- you will see that the brand name is not in use. Such models are referred to as "finely detailed resin cast miniatures".

Your boxes with the Finecast name on presumably are old stock or designs that have not yet been replaced in the supply chain.

I bought 1 box of quins and 2 boxes of rangers and they were awful, plastic is so soft they were broken out of the box, now i live about 40 miles from my nearest GW store but when i spoke to GW all they said was go back to the shop....never buying finecast again

I've never had an issue with finecast and I have Urien, 6 haemonculi, 15 wracks, 5 incubi, 6 fire dragons, a Succubus, 2 farseers, 2 autarchs and a load of tyranid stuff.

Never seen a bubble or anything in any of it.

You see, herein lies the problem - a lot of people simply don't see the flaws. Perhaps they're stupendously lucky.

Personally I think it's a crap material and process, and it is a case of luck rather than reliability when a good model turns up. This said, my definition of good is 'as little work as possible to get it looking as intended'. I don't mind filling gaps at joins, pinning, cleaning flash or a bit of mould slip etc. I do mind resculpting edges on armour, clothing and faces.

Just with regards to bendy resin I've always found the best thing to do is quench the component when you've reset it.

Run it under your hot tap until flexible, shape it as necessary and then immediately dunk it in cold water, whilst holding it to the desired shape as best as possible.

Note: I've only really tried this with FW resin, not sure how well it would work with Finecast, but worth a try.

 jah-joshua wrote:
i don't get the dislike of metal...
every material, for me, takes the same amount of prep work, and gets the same amount of pins...

the detail of metal is slightly better than plastic, but neither of them compare to the exquisite detail that comes out in a well cast resin mini...
now if you want to compare a hard resin from Forge World to a softer spincast resin from GW, i'll take the hard resin every time...
given the choice between an old version of a mini in metal, or a new version in Finecast ( i.e. Astorath, Ulric, or any of the character minis that got the switch), i always go for metal...

honestly, i would never buy a Finecast mini for my own collection, because i prefer metal way more...
this is not rose-tintery, as i work with metal right now...
it's not as if it is something that has ceased to exist, and we are dreaming of the good old days...
i have a metal Thunderfire Cannon sitting on my desk that went together with no problems, and that is one piece that people always complained about...

the dislike of metal really baffles me...

cheers
jah

I'm not saying "people who prefer metal are wearing their rose tints", I'm saying people who complain specifically about the cleanup time required for Finecast specifically or resin generally have an awfully short memory, because a lot of metal models were genuine pains in the proverbial to clean up and put together. For myself, the preference for almost any resin over metal comes down to conversions and bad models; resin takes slightly more prep work than metal assuming both are good quality casts that fit together well, but it takes roughly the same amount of time to finish because resin is easier to work with(easier to see what you're doing, easier to drill, easier to trim mould lines etc), so in the end it doesn't matter unless, as I do, you tend to convert everything you can get your hands on, in which case resin comes out ahead - and in the case of a bad model, the same applies since you're dealing with the same parameters as a conversion, just to fix it rather than change it. Metal models will generally require at least two or three offerings to ol' Khorne if you try and do anything bar stick them together; my fingers have significantly fewer chunks out of them these days now I work primarily in resin and plastic.

I've had three or four finecast 40k characters - Urien Rackharth (lots o arms), Huron Blackheart, DE Llamea, all with no problems aside from the thin sheen of flash to clean out. No major casting problems, but with Huron, its hard to tell. I have an Isabella and Valkia from fantasy, again, no problems at all.

All of my forgeworld purchases have been perfect, aside from Hector Rex's sword, which was fixed with some hot water. Now perfect. (and that's an entire Dkok army, tank upgrade kits)

My LE McVey resin miniature - perfect.

My Mongoose Star Fleet resin ships - meh. Salvageable.

I much prefer metal models to plastic for just about everything except for large tanks. For infantry, as I age, I wish they were single piece metals and single piece plastics. Save so much time in clean up and assembly, considering they're used en masse (ancients, whfb) on the table.

I always buy my character models in metal where available, and have skipped on a lot of the new ones as a result of plastic pricing.

I know it always gets mentioned - if the Perry's can put out near mold-line free plastics of 34 models for $30, why can't GW. If Perry can put out near perfect metal casts at 6 models for $14, and 3 cavalry for $14, why can't GW? I know its boutique pricing, and other companies follow along in their pricing, but the "cost of metals" argument is weak when you look at the prices of metals in other miniature hobbies, and since all that plastic production is being done in house, you know that's cheaper than Perry pays for Renedra. That's the cost of being publicly traded I guess.

Bottom line means it makes me very selective in what I purchase, and in what material.

 Cruentus wrote:

I know it always gets mentioned - if the Perry's can put out near mold-line free plastics of 34 models for $30, why can't GW. If Perry can put out near perfect metal casts at 6 models for $14, and 3 cavalry for $14, why can't GW? I know its boutique pricing, and other companies follow along in their pricing, but the "cost of metals" argument is weak when you look at the prices of metals in other miniature hobbies, and since all that plastic production is being done in house, you know that's cheaper than Perry pays for Renedra. That's the cost of being publicly traded I guess.

Why? Because they can, and people are willing to pay the price.

Perry's price point could be just goodwill, but more likely they are pricing their products at what the historical market will bear. They've also got very little over head, advertising, etc.

GW charges what the market will bear, because as far as many of their fans are (unfortuntately) concerned, the ARE the market.

 jah-joshua wrote:

depends on the company, and the amount of volume they are trying to move, in my experience...
Studio McVey Limited Edition resins, the short lived Rackham Legends LE resins (right before Rackham went under), CMON LE resins, and Figuralia LE's are the most beautiful, perfect pieces i have in my collection...
they are very small runs, and each cast with care and patience...

Ilyad minis were almost perfect...
there were a few boo-boos here and there, but they upped the numbers on what they were moving compared to LE runs...

Forge World makes a lot of product, and the results show...
sometimes you get lucky, and sometimes you crap out and have to get a replacement...

Two-part casts degrade over use, so a first run will always be cleaner than run number 100,000. Specifically, over many uses the two parts of the mold will meet slightly less perfectly, giving harder to fix mold lines and higher ratio of "unacceptable" pieces. I suspect this is why a small run company is more likely to yield a perfect cast than something like Finecast.

correct, Talys...

Forge World, who keep things in stock over many years, are having to remake molds on a regular basis for big selling items, and yet their quality is still hit or miss...
a big question for a company moving a lot of stock, is how long to let things sit in the mold curing before packing that next order the client is demanding...
i suspect that is where the majority of their warping comes from, and the same has been seen in Finecast sprues...
they just don't get to sit and cure long enough:(...

for a boutique resin company like Studio McVey, they have stated that they only get about 75 copies out of a mini before they remake the mold...
since their LE's are a run of 750 each, that's ten molds per run...
nice dedication to quality...
when one sees the quality of the small run LE's, using proper resin, and then compares that to Sedition Wars, using a material similar to Finecast, you see where the quality has dropped...

it looks like things are improving over time, with restic in general, but it still can't compare with metal for mass production quality...
metal does the job well, while it seems like spincast resin is still in the experimental phase, where companies are trying new mixes, and there are a lot of growing pains...

cheers
jah

Frankly, having only had a handful of finecast myself & them having no issues, I have looked many of them over in FLGS & MANY of them were just plain BAD. To say that's just how things are now & deal with it is a mistake. There are many other companies out there producing fair to excellent models & even rules & it seems that often times (speaking as a 20 year 40k/gw veteran) this concept gw instills in our heads that they are THE company still makes us just accept from them what we wouldn't accept from Samsung or Ford. I've recently realized it's not 1995 anymore, I'm no longer a 12 year old playing 2nd edition & gw is not the be all end all game company they were back then. Finecast models being a crapshoot & hardback codices being almost what the starter set I began this game with cost pushed me out of the game & on to bigger & better things. That & plastic single figures costing as much or more than a squad box.

winterdyne wrote:
You see, herein lies the problem - a lot of people simply don't see the flaws. Perhaps they're stupendously lucky.

Personally I think it's a crap material and process, and it is a case of luck rather than reliability when a good model turns up. This said, my definition of good is 'as little work as possible to get it looking as intended'. I don't mind filling gaps at joins, pinning, cleaning flash or a bit of mould slip etc. I do mind resculpting edges on armour, clothing and faces.

To be honest I suspect there is a degree of exaggeration on both ends of the pro- to anti- spectrum.

I obviously hat quite some luck, most of my finecast models were without bubbles. And I bought 50+ over the last years for 4 armies.

I like it for conversions. But that's the only thing I like with it.

And there's so much to hate. After a warm day in the car you can realign all your weapons with a hairdryer since they look like they need a viagra...

I like a finished and painted metal model, I still have a lot of them from the last 20 years of 40k, but they were also a pain in the ass to clean of mould lines and flashes, but you had something solid at the end.

If it was for me they would just bring everything in plastic and adjust the price (lower), but they won't do that.

It boggles my mind when people say they haven't had any flawed models. Not calling them liars, but I struggle to imagine how it happens. On several occasions since it's inception I've gone to different GW stores and looked at blister pack after blister pack of flawed models and even after buying one I thought was ok, once I open it I see all the bubbles I missed.

It's all fixable, but the few models I've bought have been an additional 1-2 hours of prep time for an infantry sized model which is just not acceptable to me for models that cost so damned much.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Murenius wrote:
If it was for me they would just bring everything in plastic and adjust the price (lower), but they won't do that.

I believe the problem with that is the tooling cost for converting every single thing to plastic. Given they're going away from finecast now, we'll probably eventually see exclusively plastic... but I'm not sure it'll be a good thing, as I don't expect we'll have the huge range we've had in years gone by.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
It boggles my mind when people say they haven't had any flawed models. Not calling them liars, but I struggle to imagine how it happens. On several occasions since it's inception I've gone to different GW stores and looked at blister pack after blister pack of flawed models and even after buying one I thought was ok, once I open it I see all the bubbles I missed.

It's all fixable, but the few models I've bought have been an additional 1-2 hours of prep time for an infantry sized model which is just not acceptable to me for models that cost so damned much.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Murenius wrote:
If it was for me they would just bring everything in plastic and adjust the price (lower), but they won't do that.

I believe the problem with that is the tooling cost for converting every single thing to plastic. Given they're going away from finecast now, we'll probably eventually see exclusively plastic... but I'm not sure it'll be a good thing, as I don't expect we'll have the huge range we've had in years gone by.

"I'm not calling you a liar, I just can't believe that what you're saying is true"