Rather than clog up my blog with updates on this, I’ll talk about it here.
I have an update on this.
Ed over at Troll Forged minis has been experimenting over the last 6-9 months with spincast plastic. For those who don’t know this is actually a big step. He’s using silicone rubber moulds to spincast plastic. Something I’m not aware of any other company doing.
Anyhow, with the constant experimenting to blend the perfect plastic it has taken a while. Which is how come the evil dwarfs have been delayed a little longer than I anticipated (compared to him just doing them in resin).
Ed has now reached the stage where he is trying to move a lot of his current range over to plastic, which will mean making new moulds for all of them I think.
On the plus side, because I have already agreed with Ed that I will be needing hundreds of casts he’s putting my models right near the top of the list (the arms are done already).
So once he gets the moulds made he can spincast 12 or so models at once in plastic. Which will hopefully mean I won’t have that much longer to wait before they go for sale.
I haven’t actually been finishing off my other models for sale as I waited to see what happened. So I guess I will have to get to work on them asap.
Here is a pic of a spin. Someone else’s models unfortunately. I think he’s planning to dye it grey:
Yes it’s a standard spincast machine with cold cast silicone rubber moulds.
You pour the metal (or in this case plastic) in the top and it all spins outwards.
It will save Ed a HUGE amount of time, money and effort, as he was in the process of moving from metal to resin casting, but this will be cheaper than both and he can spincast instead of doing each model separately (or groups of them, don’t know how many he does at once now).
He’s basically said to me that he will charge a certain amount for the first load, but after the moulds are paid for etc the price might drop a bit. Which would then be up to me whether I pass it on. Either way it’s still going to be relatively cheap (around £30 for 20). Waiting for the final costs on his side.
Ive encounted spincast before, Though huge advantage due to timescale and resources but there is a reason why the big industry don’t use it, the quality is a little less and detail more soft.
I would still buy some just to support you Grim! Im just hoping these won’t be a disappointment like spincast ive bought before.
I’ll take huge close up pics of every model and quality check every piece so people know exactly what they’re buying.
Incidently, I think a lot of the ‘large’ small companies, like AOW and Hasslefree do use spincast models. The difference is probably that they use vulcanised moulds (temperature and pressure treated rubber), which would probably hold much better detail than cold cast as the moulds would be longer lasting.
Interesting. It’s a little hard to make out the quality right now, and they do look a bit like army men from the photos, but I guess we’ll see in time if it works.
I"m impressed. Any idea what kind of centrifuge he’s using, or any other details of the process? I’ve been thinking about spin casting for a few years now after my last round of casting. All the miscasts and extra effort got to be tedious. I’d much rather put in the effort up front to get a process that’s more reliable.
Afaik it’s just a regular metal spin casting machine set up to do plastic. I don’t think he’s vulcanising the moulds because he can mould plastic components (which you can’t do in a vulcanising press as they would melt/deform). So just regular rtv rubber afaik.
Ok. To keep you guys in the loop we’re looking at at least 3 weeks minimum for the sprue.
I misunderstood. The bodies sprue is already done, but the arms and shields all need resin masters first because they included plastic.
So after 3 weeks (minimum) the sprue should be finished (hopefully) and Ed can start cranking them out. It’ll then be at least another 3 weeks I imagine for them to be cast and shipped over to the UK. But I presume Ed would start taking US orders immediately if I asked him to.
I won’t be taking orders until they are here in my hands, to avoid messing anyone around. I will also want to quality check every single part.
