Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I've been noticing that a lot of these Kickstarter funded projects are making miniatures, terrain, and bases out of PVC. Given that you still need to tool (drill/carve) metal molds to make these, why is PVC the preferred medium?

From what I've seen so far PVC seems inferior to styrene in terms of holding detail, assembly (superglue instead of plastic cement), conversions, and cleaning up casting issues such as mold lines. So why do it? Is styrene really that much more expensive to use/tool molds for than PVC?

What am I missing here?

Is the mold making really the same? I assumed that the PVC shared more with metal molding techniques than polystyrene. If that's the case then I am really baffled indeed.

Same. I was under the impression that PVC or 'restic' was popular because it was possible to use it in spin casting machines, like metal, with similarly made molds, rather than the very expensive tooled metal molds and plastic injection machinery.

 Breotan wrote:
I've been noticing that a lot of these Kickstarter funded projects are making miniatures, terrain, and bases out of PVC. Given that you still need to tool (drill/carve) metal molds to make these, why is PVC the preferred medium?

From what I've seen so far PVC seems inferior to styrene in terms of holding detail, assembly (superglue instead of plastic cement), conversions, and cleaning up casting issues such as mold lines. So why do it? Is styrene really that much more expensive to use/tool molds for than PVC?

What am I missing here?

You can spincast PVC and you can undercut details like you can in resin, it basically gives you the price stability and undercutting of resin with the pain in the rear and relative cheapness of metal combined into one medium, but to do so you really have to soften detail, which means it really isn't as good as it sounds.

 Breotan wrote:
What am I missing here?

It's basically a question of accountability. Failures that would be your problem when working in HIPS can be made the customer's problem when working in PVC. For example, you can't get away with using incompetently designed moulds with HIPS. If you try, your machine will jam, and you will have to fix the problem. With PVC, it doesn't matter if the mould jams - just yank it out anyway, sell it and pretend that the resulting warping is a natural consequence of the casting method and not the fact you've been removing the models from the mould before they're set.

 Krellnus wrote:

You can spincast PVC and you can undercut details like you can in resin, it basically gives you the price stability and undercutting of resin with the pain in the rear and relative cheapness of metal combined into one medium, but to do so you really have to soften detail, which means it really isn't as good as it sounds.

I don't believe that is correct.

PVC is still injection molded in metal tools. I believe the major difference between it and Polystyrene is that PVC can be injected at lower temperatures and has lower cooling requirements, thus lowering mold complexity and cost.

Anything you see referred to as "Restic" and is being spin cast is a resin/plastic hybrid material, not straight PVC. The fact that PVC (and thus, injection molded) models are also referred to as "Restic" is what creates a lot of confusion. And is the number one reason that the term needs to die ASAP, in my opinion.

~Eric

Basically PVC can be more flexible than styrene, so you can have some degree of undercuts in you mini design similar to what you can do in metal

this means more flexibility in design, and far fewer individual pieces are required for an individual mini

this is especially important if you're aiming at the board game crowd where no user assembly is the ideal (so either single piece minis, or assembled in the factory)

the trade off is shrinkage which is a problem as it blurs details especially fine ones like faces, plus potentially more difficult clean up and having to use superglue

Set up costs, getting a mold made for PVC is about $3k which can accommodate a pair of 28mm figures, meanwhile a HIPS will set you back $20-$30k for the same size mold.

PVC molds are milled from aluminum and HIPS molds are done from steel so there's a significant difference in the tools and time it takes.

 paulson games wrote:
Set up costs, getting a mold made for PVC is about $3k which can accommodate a pair of 28mm figures, meanwhile a HIPS will set you back $20-$30k for the same size mold.

PVC molds are milled from aluminum and HIPS molds are done from steel so there's a significant difference in the tools and time it takes.

Okay. This makes sense, I guess. Thanks.

Some PVC molds are milled from Aluminum...so are some HIPS or ABS. That really is less of the issue. QC-10 alloy is actually replacing tool steel in a lot of tooling for all plastics. It has been in use for about a decade now and has shown the ability to be used for well over a million shots. With a hardness that is equal to P20 tool steel, it is able to cycle faster (due to aluminums better heat transfer abilities) and be machined more easily (due to still being aluminum...). Last time I priced out production aluminum versus steel - the aluminum was only about 25% less to cut than steel. However you also got another savings of almost 50% on each shot due to the faster cycle time [for HIPS parts].

The really cheap aluminum molds are not well suited for PVC miniatures though. They are generally tooled out of a 6000 series aluminum alloy. This softer material actually will deform after a hundred or so pulls of a miniature that has undercuts. Not bad for something that is simple and undercut free - but still generally a prototyping mold as opposed to a production mold. Something that is truly short run (probably 90% of miniature related projects could be done as aluminum molds for HIPS using the softer alloys - and because of the lack of undercuts...those molds hold up better to it).

The big thing is really the undercuts. Reaper uses steel tooling for their Bones material - but they didn't want to have to completely redesign the figures to convert them to plastic. HIPS tends to not be as flexible as PVC can be. Because you can get a pretty durable PVC compound that is also fairly flexible, you can have tools made that have undercuts like you would with metal casting.

It is pretty easy stuff to get OK looking one piece PVC miniatures. It is nearly impossible to get OK looking one piece HIPS miniatures. This means that for markets like board games - HIPS is often right out. Most board game consumers are not modelers - they don't want to assemble hundreds of parts before they start the game. A lot of board game distributors and retailers won't even touch a product that is set up like that. PVC though - lets them produce one part counters which can also hit the miniature consumer as well.

PVC is not spin cast - non of the thermoplastics are spin cast (some thermoset plastics are though). It has to be heated up and forced into molds just like HIPS (generally it is the exact same machines that work with both plastics).

Temperature also isn't a significant factor. The difference between the glass transition for PVC and for HIPS is about the difference between coffee and tea. The temperature doesn't have a huge impact on the complexity of the mold either - it comes into play for the time between cycles - but that is a different issue.

Whoever it was who said Restic ought to be dragged into the street and beat about the head and neck with PVC pipes... That dumb term has lead to more confusion than anything else...about the only thing in recent years as bad is "spin cast plastic".

Taarnak wrote:
Anything you see referred to as "Restic" and is being spin cast is a resin/plastic hybrid material, not straight PVC. The fact that PVC (and thus, injection molded) models are also referred to as "Restic" is what creates a lot of confusion. And is the number one reason that the term needs to die ASAP, in my opinion.

~Eric

Sean_OBrien wrote:

Whoever it was who said Restic ought to be dragged into the street and beat about the head and neck with PVC pipes... That dumb term has lead to more confusion than anything else...about the only thing in recent years as bad is "spin cast plastic".

If ANYTHING spreads out of the thread, it needs to be this.

Just to be clear - don't mean Loki in this thread...I mean whoever it was who said it first, years ago and started the mess of confusion (and hasn't bothered to clean up their mess since).

Companies creating new words (especially dumb words) to describe existing things is very annoying. Why not just call it PVC or vinyl. It isn't like those are new materials to modeling. I have a vinyl Star Wars model that is over 25 years old. It has been used since before then too.

Spin cast plastic...that is called resin. Again, nothing new. Production "cold cast" knick knacks have been spin cast and shipped out by the thousands to hobby shops, craft stores and big boxes for well over two decades. So you put some styrene in it...that is called a filler.

No need to feel special. No need to have a special name. If you want to feel special - call it "Supacast: Finely detailed PVC miniatures" or some such. Lets the consumer know what they are working with - and it prevents the stupidity of Restic.

I've heard that PVC is subject to offgassing as it ages, and the fumes can be toxic. Is this true and, if so, how does it impact on the use of PVC for miniatures?

 Sean_OBrien wrote:

No need to feel special. No need to have a special name. If you want to feel special - call it "Supacast: Finely detailed PVC miniatures" or some such. Lets the consumer know what they are working with - and it prevents the stupidity of Restic.

In many peoples minds:
PVC = kids toy
Resin = best quality miniatures
So they want to give it an air of quality that PVC just dosn't have. As with many things, marketing is the answer.

Personaly I would like them to be up front, but only because I thing PVC is a poor matirial for miniatures, with many of the worst features of resin and plastic. I'm sure someone will disagree with me, but it is partly subjective and I hate it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Turaxa wrote:
I've heard that PVC is subject to offgassing as it ages, and the fumes can be toxic. Is this true and, if so, how does it impact on the use of PVC for miniatures?

PVC Off gasses when it's new. Some people think those fumes may be toxic, but given the amount of PVC around in everything from food preperation to flooring and car interiors, I wouldn't worry about the tiny amount in a few minis.

Turaxa wrote:
I've heard that PVC is subject to offgassing as it ages, and the fumes can be toxic. Is this true and, if so, how does it impact on the use of PVC for miniatures?

There is a lot of noise regarding PVC and greenies.

Most of it is tied to vinyl chloride monomer - which is kill you dead type stuff - used in the manufacture of PVC. Once it is converted into PVC though, it is largely inert. If you worked in a factory that made PVC - and for some reason one of the holding tanks or transfer lines were to rupture and the secondary containment were to fail...you might be at risk. Otherwise - not so much.

The other big issue are phthalates. If you believe the hype - they will cause you to have three legged babies who look like Cher (not really - but the studies range from little significant effect to birth defects and all the rest). Most miniature companies use phthalate free PVC. However, most recycled plastics mix all the plastics up into a big vat and you don't know what you are getting (which is why most the bottles that are made from recycled plastics leach phthalates into the fluid they contain...while those that are virgin do not...).

The plastics industry has largely switched away from phthalates for plastics that consumers come into contact with (still used in some things like DWV pipe, industrial coatings and what not). Granted that voluntary switch didn't stop them from passing a law anyway...

Interestingly enough - the plasticizers used in HIPS and ABS are prone to outgas at a rate 50% higher than those in PVC. Granted - you are talking about fractional picograms per kilogram of material...so for an entire army worth of miniatures - tiny, tiny amounts.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
Whoever it was who said Restic ought to be dragged into the street and beat about the head and neck with PVC pipes... That dumb term has lead to more confusion than anything else...about the only thing in recent years as bad is "spin cast plastic".

"Restic" is a symptom of this confusion, not the cause. It's a term based on the customer-observed attributes of a wide array of plastic/resin substitutes - "Finecast", "Warcast", "Trollcast", "plastic resin", "spin-cast plastic" - that share certain traits regardless of whether or not they are chemically identical.

I haven't bothered to run GC analysis on it - but backroom chemical analysis of both Trollcast and Warcast (checking to see what does and does not dissolve them and working through the process of elimination...) those both appear to be basic polyurethane resins - with various fillers.

Finecast is also - a polyurethane resin.

Spin-cast plastic is - a polyurethane resin.

Plastic resin is - duh...all casting resins are plastic.

Most of that issue (customer observations) stem from customer's having a very narrow perspective on things like metal, plastic or other materials that can be used in manufacturing. Manufacturers can quite easily help to educate the consumer by telling them what the material being used is (which helps the consumer, in that they can readily identify different techniques that work with...or will not work with a given material).

I don't see any of those particular product names as substitutes - they are just calling a horse a unicorn, when it is just a horse with paper cup taped to its forehead. The actual physical properties of the different compounds are specific to the formula and there is a wide range of properties that are achievable depending on the alloy or formula used.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
I don't see any of those particular product names as substitutes - they are just calling a horse a unicorn, when it is just a horse with paper cup taped to its forehead. The actual physical properties of the different compounds are specific to the formula and there is a wide range of properties that are achievable depending on the alloy or formula used.

I didn't mean that the product names are presented as substitutes, but the product itself. Everyone and their dog was claiming to have come up with an amazing new casting material that all allegedly had all the advantages of traditional resin casting and traditional HIPS casting, but they were all substantially more expensive per unit and all prone to much higher rates of casting defects and all failed to weed these defects out before shipping them out to unsuspecting customers. The actual chemical composition is largely irrelevant to the customer - what they need to know is that they're being sold snake oil.

Sean - do you work in the industry? If so, how the hell does a young (industrial) engineer get into the plastics manufacturing business? Theres tons of manufacturing firms here in Jersey but I cant even get so much as a grunt of acknowledgement let alone an interview.

 AlexHolker wrote:
The actual chemical composition is largely irrelevant to the customer - what they need to know is that they're being sold snake oil.

To that I agree.

I wouldn't call it snake oil though - just a lot of pomp and circumstance.

For example - PVC works quite well in the manner which Reaper uses it (especially in the large figures like dragons). Although it lacks the detail of metal or resin - the price reduction makes up for it.

I also think that a lot of companies are missing the boat with using it for other big stuff (you can do huge terrain items very cheaply with it).

When they market it as a higher quality product though - that is a bit misleading. I wouldn't call it lower quality per se - just it is a different material which is used best differently.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Sean - do you work in the industry? If so, how the hell does a young (industrial) engineer get into the plastics manufacturing business? Theres tons of manufacturing firms here in Jersey but I cant even get so much as a grunt of acknowledgement let alone an interview.

Sent a PM.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
[

I also think that a lot of companies are missing the boat with using it for other big stuff (you can do huge terrain items very cheaply with it).

When they market it as a higher quality product though - that is a bit misleading. I wouldn't call it lower quality per se - just it is a different material which is used best differently.

I'm kind of hoping that reaper KS part two corrects this a bit. There are some notable terrain items in that KS such as a shipping container and a ruined castle base for a dragon that is a piece of scenery in it's own right. Maybe if those sell well post-KS other companies might join in?

Scenery does seem to sell less units than figures though, so how much scenery would actually be worth putting into vinyl?

Hoping so too.

The how much to be worthwhile thing is a bit of a tough one though.

I know that Pegasus paid off the molds for their "Gothic Collection" in about 6 months time. They actually have a hard time keeping it in stock and are looking at retooling - but are wary of the investment (granted that is HIPS).

If it is cheap enough, it should sell well enough. However, too cheap and the margins go to pot. If it is priced too high, it is hard to compete against more finely detailed resin or custom made terrain as well as the even cheaper products (MDF and blankets over books...). I think that dragon set should be versatile enough to sell like hot cakes - depending on the price ($10-15 should do well...much higher and it will become a hard sell).

You also have to consider playing the long game with plastics. Something that is profitable in 2 or 3 years time can be a good product provided that you keep in in production for 10 years or so. Generic terrain has those legs to keep producing sales for years.

I don't hope GW reads this or we will get FineRestic soon with a 20% price increase.

Would't the only danger of PVC be in a fire? As it would set free the Chlorine.

That makes sense, though to be fair, the Pegasus gothic terrain is really nice, user-configurable and tailor-made for the GW audience, with an audience that is wider than that. I'm not sure how such a system/product would be done in PVC.

The dragon set is a rather clever case in that the dragon will bring up the number of units sold, so the castle part could be sold separately as well without having to justify it's existence by selling on it's own.

Still, I do agree that there are quite a few subjects like the shipping container that could sell well. Though they will have to price them cheap enough to undercut the other wooden, hard plastic and resin shipping containers which seem to sell for around $9-14 each these days.

Same way it is done with HIPS.

Easier though. You wouldn't need to have the columns as separate parts in order to have the needed pin and socket connection points. Everything would be done as single parts.

Just like the Pegasus terrain - a half dozen different wall tiles can be put together in hundreds of different configurations. 3 or 4 different sets (stone, brick, preformed concrete...) to cover fantasy/historical, modern and future settings.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
Same way it is done with HIPS.

Easier though. You wouldn't need to have the columns as separate parts in order to have the needed pin and socket connection points. Everything would be done as single parts.

That would be a spectacular failure. Parts shrinking and warping would play havoc with the tolerances necessary for the parts to fit together snugly.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
I don't hope GW reads this or we will get FineRestic soon with a 20% price increase.

Would't the only danger of PVC be in a fire? As it would set free the Chlorine.

Yeah - burning PVC isn't a good thing. The chlorine being set free isn't really all that hazardous though. Indoor swimming pools and the like have much higher concentrations of free chlorine in the air around them than what you would release if you burned a house full of PVC pipes and wire insulation. However, under certain circumstances - the chlorine can bind with free hydrogen and form hydrochloric acid (which isn't good to breath - for obvious reasons) - but it takes a sweet spot of conditions to form (the sweet spot is difficult to achieve in a fire...but easy to achieve with a laser engraver - don't engrave PVC).

More commonly you have a release of chlorinated dioxins and furans. The specific compounds created will vary depending on the temperature of the fire, what else is burning at the same time and what sort of air exchange there is into the fire. A lot of those compounds are pretty bad for your health - but then again...most smoke isn't good to be breathing in anyway. I'm not too worried about the long term effects of smoke inhalation from my Bones miniatures burning so much as I am concerned about the short term health effects of being burned alive...

By comparison - burning polystyrene releases mostly water, carbon (in the form of soot) and carbon dioxide/monoxide depending on the heat of the fire. Contrary to what certain greenies will have you believe - the black from a polystyrene fire isn't an indication of anything other than pure carbon...and I have heard tell of this dangerous substance called styrene gas which in my years of working with chemicals I have never encountered. I have however dealt with styrene (use it when working with polyester resins quite often) which will evaporate - and burn, quite well...so you won't release it when burning polystyrene, even if fires did work in that manner (which they don't).

And for completeness - polyurethane (foam or resin variety) is probably the worst of things to burn. In the most basic terms - the simpler the compound, the less crap it might release when burned. Polyurethanes are very complex compounds. Complex compounds thend (tend - not always, tend) to be more difficult to burn. The same holds true to polyurethane (much of it is actually rated as fire retardant...but enough heat will burn most anything). Light it up though - and you get all sorts of nasty out of it. Because of the complexity of the oxidization process though - most of it will escape the fire without fully burning and be released as partially decayed compounds (things like benzene, toluene, nitrogen oxides of various sorts and if really unfortunate compounds like hydrogen cyanide). The benzene and toluene will either reburn quite quickly or dissipate. The nitrogen oxides are annoying, but generally on the safer side of dangerous things. Hydrogen Cyanide...well, that is some bad mojo.

The lesson of course is not to burn plastic. If you do burn plastic - burn polystyrene. Don't burn polyurethane. Do not burn polyurethane.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AlexHolker wrote:

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
Same way it is done with HIPS.

Easier though. You wouldn't need to have the columns as separate parts in order to have the needed pin and socket connection points. Everything would be done as single parts.

That would be a spectacular failure. Parts shrinking and warping would play havoc with the tolerances necessary for the parts to fit together snugly.

For all the issues that people have with PVC miniatures...the plastics industry hasn't had those issues for going on 40 years...

Walk into any hardware store, head to the plumbing section. Grab a male slip joint connector and a female slip joint connector. They fit. Every time. The only issue that might happen is a bit of flash and the mold line. The same actually holds true for regular toys which have been made for decades using PVC.

PVC won't shrink when cast - at least not significantly. It isn't something that expands/shrinks as it goes from the amorphous blob when being forced into the mold to the rigid object ejected after casting (at least not significantly). Looking at my reference books (have to look this one up to be sure), depending on the specific formulation, something like a HIPS compound will shrink 0.004" per inch while something like a semi-rigid PVC will shrink 0.009" per inch. Some PVC formulations shrink as little as 0.002" per inch while some HIPS formulations shrink as much as 0.006" per inch. That means that over the course of something like a 4" x 4" wall tile - the overall change will be less than 2 hundredths of an inch. All of that is very easy to take into account when engineering the mold - it is a constant that can be predicted and taken into account.

I haven't dealt much with some of the other companies PVC, but I haven't had any significant issues with Bones...or PVC products from a dozen other manufacturers - many of which have to have better fit and finish than miniatures in order to look right. Most of the issues though look to be issues in the design side more than the manufacturing side - and as they say, garbage in, garbage out.

Warping is another issue that is easy to deal with - and is quite often an issue of packing and shipping as opposed to manufacturing. Sagging is the bigger issue that is more difficult to deal with. Gravity is a cruel mistress and soft materials often will sag over time due to the constant downward force.

Sean,

Thank you for the detailed information. I always love to learn a little more about the hobby I'm involved in and this sort of thing is always welcome! I have a new outlook on things like PVC toys. I was always dismissive of them before, but I'll take another look.

Just to be clear though...

I don't think that PVC is superior for miniatures, in many respects I feel it is inferior.

However, most the faults that exist with PVC miniatures are not because of the material used - rather the manner in which they are manufactured as well as poor mold design (in some respects that probably goes to getting what you pay for - in terms of the mold and manufacturing). When they are trying to pay bottom dollar for figures, they tend to get bottom dollar results.

One of the downsides of HIPS figures is that they are either stiff looking, awkward multipart figures or have 50 different parts to make a dynamic looking single figure. It is the nature of the material. We ignore a lot of those downsides for the benefits (awkward poses to allow for multipart customizability for example). When it comes to single characters though - HIPS is tough to really justify. The limitations make a focal figure pretty static looking (which GW compensates for by throwing more crap on top). Metal and Resin allow for dynamic figures with few parts - due to the soft nature of the molds - but it is labor intensive and requires strict QC. PVC tends to be a little softer (though in fairness - if you look at things like the Pegasus Dinosaurs or even the older Horizon Hunter-Killer Drone...20 years old now I think - it can be very crisp if you invest in the tooling).

...Mind tends to wander some. For me, HIPS is best suited for mechanicals - vehicles, hard suit armor and what not. PVC is a good choice for high volume organics - but to do it right, you need to treat them like they were metal/resin and have a half dozen or more poses. Metal/Resin are still king for solos and characters (provided they are not too large). For large solos - PVC.

It is disappointing though that so many of the companies who are dabbling with the material are also looking at it as a dirt cheap material to get molds made too. They save a bit upfront, but as a result - it has given the material a bad name for a lot of people who haven't worked with it from other companies who bother to do it right.

Thanks for the info Sean,

As i stated before it seems that the Mini companies have to re-learn all the techniques with PVC, here in Japan are a huge amount of Gachapon (random ball with figure in them, from a vending machine) figures ranging from cutsy figures to robot (gundam) figures with crisp details and it is mostly PVC.