I've heard people saying that molds can cost $10k
Why are they so expensive? Is it just the quantity of molds (where the raw materials take up the cost)?
For metal, as I understand it, molds aren't permanent, so I guess that would up the cost a bit... But for plastic?
I imagine sculpting can simply be done on the computer, and then have a production quality resin 3d printer print youtube.com
Then make a mold of it, and mass produce.
I want to know about both plastic and metal.
Do you know what kind of mold that $10k figure is referring to?
I doubt it's in regards to a ten figure disc.
They're talking about GW figures, which afaik are even in plastic.
I think I've seen people say such a mold costs them $100k, and so on.
Metal molds for plastic casting wear out too. Remember that the wear limit for a mold is very, very small, because the first thing to go is the tiny bits of metal that define detail on the model. Sure, the plastic puts very little wear on the metal, but it only takes a little wear to fuck it up.
Every time a mold wears out, you need to make a new one from the master model, and every time you do that, the master degrades. Eventually it reaches the point where you need a new master, and that's pretty much the whole initial cost all over again.
Well, consider what it costs to A) commission a sculptor to create the base template of the model
Then B) the cost of hiring a millwright to create an industrial mold for those templates (in however many parts and steps that the model requires)
Then C) the cost of keeping a millwright on staff to repair and maintain those molds in your production facilities, before even thinking of hiring on hands for sorting, packaging, QA, Shipping, etc.
I consider Warhams and other model-based tabletop games to be incredibly overpriced, but hey. It's a niche market of a niche market, and the profit has to come from somewhere.
Why not use silicone molds for plastic? Don't they take minimal wear?
The master can be reprinted from a 3d printer, and so there'd only be the 3d printer cost (like 100-300$).
For the work force.
Say one model nets them 3$ (probably a lot more).
Every mold makes 5 at a time, so you make 15$. To be on the same side, lets say it take 1 minute to make 1 set. That makes 900$ of profit per hour, per mold/worker.
>But for plastic?
en.wikipedia.org
GW uses rather high quality steel molds for their plastic kits, which have a pretty huge initial cost. I never bothered to figure out the exact details, but they aren't super important. The reason they don't skimp on materials being GW does (almost) all of their casting in-house, and need those molds to last for a long-ass time.
They COULD just move all their manufacturing to asian factories, but the fact that they haven't is something I honestly respect them for.
The image in the OP would be the method that GW used to use for their pewter/lead figures. Presumably that's what they still use on the Made to Order stuff.
Making plastic injection moulds, digital sprue design:
youtu.be
Creating the mould: youtube.com
>Why not use silicone molds for plastic? Don't they take minimal wear?
Given the pressure the semi-liquid plastic is injected at, a silicon mold would most likely fail to retain its shape.
>Say one model nets them 3$ (probably a lot more).
A basic engineering principle is "shit in, shit out". No matter how good a model you have, if you feed it shit data, it will give you shit results.
In this case, your model of the costs and profits of running a miniatures making business is probably pure shit in itself, and on then you feed it numbers you've pulled straight out of your arse. You may as well use an Ouija board.
This! This right here, you nailed it sir!
First person on Veeky Forums apart from myself with a sense of reason behind your thinking process when it comes to miniature wargames.
Short answer: They don't. One like in your pic would be $50-$100. Unless you mean total cost of all the initial setup. Then sure $10k seems about right.
>like 100-300$
Yeah, no. Try a few thousand if you want tolerable resolution.
>so there'd only be the 3d printer cost
The material used to "print" isn't free.
Depending on the style of printer, it can be quite expensive.
Plus, you would have to hire (or train) a guy to keep the printer calibrated to really high precision.
You save very, very little from doing all this.
Most of a mold's "cost" comes from paying people to design/sculpt new models.
Working at a factory that does plastic injection molding I can easily see molds costing well over a grand. Pretty much you have these fuckhuge molds that are just under 1 cubic meter have to put them into machines bigger than an SUV and have them inject molten plastic into them at high pressures. While I will admit my company isn't the most efficient it isn't as though the parts are particularly big (car mirror parts so at biggest its just the shield part of your car mirror, although some parts are about twice the size of a 28 mm miniature).
The thing is GW isn't using some little hand made mold at home for you to cast 20 miniatures in a room temperature plastic thing, they are using molten plastic and resin. Also while I am not sure about GW my factory has machines shitting up both the parts and just fucking breaking constantly. My factory tosses and recycles about half the shit we make due to tiny imperfections or simply because we have enough of the parts at the moment and recycling them is apparently better than building up stock.
You don't buy the 3d printer yourself, you just buy from a company that has 3d printers.
Those models don't cost thousands, and they'll have very high resolution.
>you just buy from a company that has 3d printers
I mean, if you're producing one-off models, sure.
Shit's not viable for a global producer, and certainly not profitable. 3D printing at that quality takes a lot of time and money, which is why companies only use it for masters.
The scale of 3d printing is approaching injection mold levels.
I know 3d printing minis has been a meme, but liquid resin printing is the start of rapid home prototyping at a reasonable budget.
Until this can produce a mini with current level of detail, its useless. Pro-tip: it can't.
Give it time, maybe, but this technique has been around since the 80s and it hasn't gotten much further than this since.
Let's not forget durability.
>this technique has been around since the 80s
Source?
I work for an injection moulding company (quality and project engineer).
A mould can range anywhere from 2k to 100k, depending on size (and number of cavities), complexity, materials of choice, injection method, choice of top-range components versus off-brands and a myriad of other factors.
In general the more you spend on the mold, the lower your part cost will be (faster cycle times, higher number of cavities, less scrap and downtime), the less you will have to spend in mainteniance/repairs trough the mold's lifetime, and the longer said lifetime will be.
Epanding on this, just to give people an idea of the pressure involved; typical injection moulding pressure range is from 2200 to 1500 bar, depending on the material.
For comparison, a car tire is inflated to about 1.5 bar
Typo: from 200 to 1500
You might actually be able to already, if you print them in parts.
youtube.com
This is a $4k printer, which really isn't that expensive when looking at the quality. It's also from, soon to be, last year.
So this year it'll improve, maybe the resolution will be so good that you can print it without requiring assembly.
>doesn't know what plastic injection molds are
What the fuck.
Yes. High detail plastic injection molds are expensive as fuck, and make their cost back by being able to crank out tens of thousands of whatever it's molding. Cheapo silocone molds for resin or pewter casting are much cheaper, but also wear out way faster, and damage easily.
>I imagine sculpting can simply be done on the computer, and then have a production quality resin 3d printer print
>Then make a mold of it, and mass produce.
Yeah, this is how GW and Wyrd produce their molds. High quality plastic injection molds are hardened steel and you're not using a single mold for a massive production run - you're going to have multiple copies, both for running in tandem and for replacements due do breakage.
When you cast something in a steel mold, you don't just slap an exemplar green in between a couple sheets of wet silicone and wait for it to dry, that shit has to get precision machined out of a steel blank. Shit is not cheap.
You want a cheap silicone mold for a short personal run? 3D printed master and a cheapo silicone mold is fine. It's complete shit for mass production though.