New Warlord resin

[Andrew Beasley]

Just stumbled on this press release announcing a new resin for figures.

Though I do not have any figures in the old resin, they seem to have targeted the issues I’ve heard with the it and:

Zero waste resin – In-house production of Warlord Resin Plus™ uses a waste reclamation system to ensure that no resin is thrown away during manufacturing. Unlike traditional plastic, this new material is completely recycled and re-used in our factory.

 

If the figures come on sprues I hope they will set up a returns option to take customer sprues back for reuse!

[Darkest Star Games]

Interesting.  I’d like to get a hold of a couple and do a little experimenting.  I just hope it’s not like the stuff GW/Forgeworld used to use that was super grainy because the re-ground the sprues and whatnot to use back in the mix or as filler.  On the other hand, if they are chemically separating and recombining it into new liquid resin that’s not exactly eco friendly… We will probably never know (or at least not soon) as they seem to hold it as proprietary.

"I saw this in a cartoon once, but I'm pretty sure I can do it..."

[Deleted User]

This is very interesting.
I’m going to have to keep my eyes out for this.

[Norm S]

Great news –  everything that was promised about this material sounded perfect to me, but the original models fell short, with clean-up being a pain and some weapons already starting out bent, hopefully the improved material and techniques that have been learned along the way will deliver – I am looking forward to this.

[McKinstry]

Given just how much I despise assembling plastic figures, if these are at least tolerable I will certainly prefer them to build your own sprues type things. I still prefer the heft of metal but the economics of historical figures should make sense for Firms and resin is probably a good deal cheaper.

The tree of Life is self pruning.

[Ian Marsh]

The innovation isn’t Warlord’s, rather what Siocast has done with the release of Siores Hard https://www.siocast.com/new-siores-hard/

It’s still a thermoplastic material. Calling it resin, which is what thermoplastic granules are also called in injection moulding, only adds to the confusion caused by most wargamers knowing resin as a two-part thermosetting plastic.

Rebranding a commercially available and presumably trademarked product is just a puzzle to me.

Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.com

[Darkest Star Games]

Thanks for that Ian, I didn’t realize I was already familiar with this material via Reaper.  The rebranding really is sort of weird.

Really the biggest advantage I see with SiORes Hard is the much lower cost of the molds and the low wastage.  I’m not sure about the cost of the machine itself, but I’d bet it costs less than half what an injection machine for metal molds costs.  That’d be a huge difference maker market wide and would bring manufacturing in-house for most companies as well as allowing smaller companies to switch over.

I don’t know about anyone else but the cost of the last batch of metal I procured was way high.

"I saw this in a cartoon once, but I'm pretty sure I can do it..."

[Leon Pengilley]

Darkest Star Games wrote:

I’m not sure about the cost of the machine itself, but I’d bet it costs less than half what an injection machine for metal molds costs.

The last time they gave me a quote it was £45,000 per machine so way out of our budget.  Moulds were £300 each as well I think, so it’s a huge outlay to get setup and I’m not sure how long it would take to see any savings over traditional metal/resin casting.

The resin is also proprietary so they’ve got a monopoly on supply and can put the prices up whenever they like, which I wasn’t keen on.

www.pendraken.co.uk - Now home to almost 6000 products, including over 4200 products in 10mm, plus MDF bases, Vallejo paints, I-94 decals, Red Vectors MDF buildings, Raiden Miniatures, Militia Miniatures and much, much more!

[OB]

What an informative thread.  Thank you all.

Leon, are you minded to do the USA-Mexican War?

OB
http://withob.blogspot.co.uk/

[Jim Webster]

Just agree with OB, a very informative thread. Thanks

https://jimssfnovelsandwargamerules.wordpress.com/

[Ian Marsh]

When Siocast was first available, the company seemed to approach every small manufacturer, promising greater productivity and more sales. But as Leon says, the cost for these small businesses is unaffordable and uneconomic. It has to be pitched at bigger players: Warlord, Workshop, and PSC, for example, for whom the outlay makes commercial sense. And there in lies the problem: ultimately, it’s a limited market. When Siocast has supplied machines to them, who else does it get to take up the process?

The issues as Leon again says of using a proprietary process with a single source of materials, imported from the EU post-Brexit, has consequences on costs. Plus, if Siocast fails as a business, it’s a dead process.

At least with metal casting, there are options for suppliers of casting machines, mould blanks and metals. So if one fails, it’s not the end of the world. And various manufacturers of equipment have failed in the past, including Saunders and MCP, both of whom made casting machines and vulcanizers.

As I’m sure a number of people know, I feel perfectly able to supply metal figures at close to or equal to the price of plastics made using the Siocast process. While metal costs more, my casting machine was about 1/100th the price that Leon quotes for a Siocast setup.

Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.com

[Darkest Star Games]

I totally agree with both of you , Ian and Leon.  It sounds like a great process, I do like the results (how many Reaper “Bones’ do I have…?) but that is way too high of a cost for a little hobby biz like me, and way too much risk exposure.  This process may become more genericized in the future which would bring probably bring the costs down due to competition, but that’ll be a long way off the way home 3d printing is becoming normalized.

"I saw this in a cartoon once, but I'm pretty sure I can do it..."

[Jim Webster]

Indeed it it becomes normalised, the costs of home 3D printing may start to impact on prices that can be charged for figures. My gut feeling is that there will be a limit to how many can fit a 3D printer into their homes, with issues of fumes etc. But eventually most wargamers will know somebody who has one.

So I suspect manufacturers will win out on quality, quantity, and because some of us still love metal figures we don’t have to assemble 🙂

https://jimssfnovelsandwargamerules.wordpress.com/

[Ian Marsh]

Home 3D printing may well make an impact. But, for me, the resin sounds very unpleasant to deal with, there are waste disposal issues (resin in alcohol), waste of material issues because supports are not recyclable, and rate of production issues (it’s slow). The machines are still hobbyists’ tools: i.e. your hobby appears to have to be 3D printing, because you have to be willing to sort out all the issues of failed prints. Commercially, it only make sense to use 3D prints for masters for other production processes that have higher rates of production (at home, however, if you need only a few figures or tanks, for example, the rate of production isn’t a factor; but the question is more if you’re going to spend £300 plus on a machine, how much do you have to run off to make it pay for itself?).

Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.com

[Andrew Beasley]

A video on WW2 infantry has be released on YouTube by Miniature Realms https://youtu.be/vZw943PpwkQ

Not perfect but much smoother than before.

As for the resin chemicals – you can get resins that clean with water but I’ve not seen it used for models.

 

[Leon Pendraken]

When I last costed replacing our 4 casting machines and almost 3000 production moulds we were well over £1m of investment required.  I think we spend about £100k per year on metal, moulds and casting labour so even if it halved our production costs we’d still not see a return on that investment for 20 years, so not viable in the slightest.

3D printing is a whole other conversation and as Ian says, a lot more suited to printing masters than printing production models.  The machines are just so slow that you’d need a bank of 15-20 of them running constantly to be able to match the output of a traditional casting machine.

OB wrote:

What an informative thread. Thank you all. Leon, are you minded to do the USA-Mexican War?

It’s on our request lists but not quite enough votes to hit the sculpting radar unfortunately.

www.pendraken.co.uk - Now home to almost 6000 products, including over 4200 products in 10mm, plus MDF bases, Vallejo paints, I-94 decals, Red Vectors MDF buildings, Raiden Miniatures, Militia Miniatures and much, much more!

[Mike]

To be fair. There are plenty of folk on etsy that make a living 3d printing. A couple of people I know have a 3 or 4 machines constantly running.

Now they work from home and have no staff so overheads are low.

I suspect if your cost of living is less than others then it is achievable.

When I was selling 3d prints I could make about £70 rrp of prints a day that cost about £10 in resin. If you have the right product at the right price and more than 1 machine it can be done.

[Guy Farrish]

I suspect it all depends on the market you are in.

‘Wargaming’ that envisages a very small number of figures where each is a unique type or pose may make print production viable at both ends of the transaction.

‘Wargaming’ where 20 units of thirty odd figures are required per side, maybe not so much.

[Jim Webster]

Guy Farrish wrote:

I suspect it all depends on the market you are in. ‘Wargaming’ that envisages a very small number of figures where each is a unique type or pose may make print production viable at both ends of the transaction. ‘Wargaming’ where 20 units of thirty odd figures are required per side, maybe not so much.

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, and also looking at prices I see in adverts etc, a lot of these speciality printers are beautiful figures which are often expensive, but you’ll need only a handful. You’re not looking for a hundred

https://jimssfnovelsandwargamerules.wordpress.com/

[Mike]

Guy Farrish wrote:

‘Wargaming’ where 20 units of thirty odd figures are required per side, maybe not so much.

 

Check out many of the 10mm fantasy 3d etsy shops.
100’s of printed figures. Whole armies. All 3d printed.
Same with 6mm.

Not everything is 28mm   😛

Also:
One of the many people on etsy has been trading for about 2 years and has almost 10,000 sales.
This includes 6mm, 10mm, 15mm, 28mm and all sorts.

https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/MGSMiniaturesEtsy

[Guy Farrish]

Well that’s me told!

I don’t do much 28mm myself and was in fact thinking of the smaller scales. How on earth – given some of the times I read bandied about for printing even small figures and vehicles – do you turn out thousands of the little b*gg*rs in a reasonable time scale to order? I wonder if the investment in multiple printers makes commercial sense? I presume it does but I’m stuffed if I see how at the moment.

The whole fantasy genre is a mystery to me though so I have no idea of the competition in metal, traditional resin, plastic or whatever else may be out there.

I still think of 3d printing as a niche production method- good for one offs or master production. I am probably way behind the times but the idea of printing off hundreds of 10mm figures a day for orders sounds odd to me. It seems I may be completely wrong (a never before heard of event!) but are there many 3d printing companies producing historicals about?

 

[Ian Marsh]

Mike wrote:

To be fair. There are plenty of folk on etsy that make a living 3d printing. A couple of people I know have a 3 or 4 machines constantly running. Now they work from home and have no staff so overheads are low. I suspect if your cost of living is less than others then it is achievable. When I was selling 3d prints I could make about £70 rrp of prints a day that cost about £10 in resin. If you have the right product at the right price and more than 1 machine it can be done.

Business overheads even when working from home are substantial, as year-end accounts often show. 🙂

And forgive me for observing, £60 gross for a day’s production is a very slow way of making money. It’s not even minimum wage, especially when all business overheads are considered.

Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.com

[Mike]

Ian Marsh wrote:

£60 gross for a day’s production is a very slow way of making money. It’s not even minimum wage

My point, badly put… was that if I can fanny about for an hour a day and make £60, people who who know what they are doing with multiple printers can certainly do more.

[Ian Marsh]

Mike wrote:

Ian Marsh wrote:

£60 gross for a day’s production is a very slow way of making money. It’s not even minimum wage

My point, badly put… was that if I can fanny about for an hour a day and make £60, people who who know what they are doing with multiple printers can certainly do more.

Yes, but some of us can fanny around for an hour or two a day with a casting machine and make much more. Or have more free time for the effort involved. 🙂

Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.com

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