Was: mini. production - sort of OT - now a note to list admin...

I'm responding to my own post - not to comment on casting but to point
out
that I posted this post during the morning and it has taken over four
hours
to get back to me.  I guess that means I'm WAAAYYYY down the list... but
I
can see why  all the talk about speeding things up.

I've seen several posts that have come in before mine got back to me
that
sort of make mine redundant.  Oh well - c'est la vie.

At 11:36 AM 23/02/99 -0500, you wrote:
>>Michael Llaneza wrote:
>>> 
>>> IMHO the best thing GW ever did
>>> was the plastic Epic-scale infantry. Plastic is expensive to set up
a
>>> production run for, but dirt cheap over a long production run. 
>>
>>	I was always curious about that.
>>	An uninformed layman would think that metal miniatures
>>	would be more expensive to produce than plastic ones.
>>
>>	I guess plastic is less forgiving a medium to work with.
>
>
>OT, but FYI
>
>The big rubber "puck" molds miniature companies use for spin casting
(how
>they make metal miniatures) cost a few hundred dollars - maybe a bit
more
>or less depending on size, the amount they purchase at one time, etc. 
One
>mold might be set up to produce, say, 20 small metal sprues of 6mm
troops.
>
>An injection moulding tool ("tool" is the technical term for a mould)
for
>20 sprues of 6mm figs set up the way GW does them might cost $20,000 or
>more.	Plastic moulding is a PRICY proposition - that's why only *big*
>companies with *lots* of sales ever jump into it in a big way. 
Something
>like a plastic base for FT models is within the possibilities of a
smaller
>company, 'cause you can package one with each ship model, but for
>individual troops, people rarely purchase enough of any one (unless you
>make only 1 or 2, but consumers don't want that - we like variety) to
make
>it worth while.  That's why GW has moved to producing multi-part
plastic
>troop kits for 40K and WHFantasy - they get the efficiencies of
injection
>moulding and the customers get figs that can be posed in many ways for
>variety.  In the long run, you can produce plastic molded figs a lot
>cheaper than spin casting, but you have to make thousands and
thousands.
>Spin casting is financially viable with small runs.  Also, spin casting
is
>a more forgiving process from a detail point of view - because the
molds
>are rubber, you can have undercut areas on a model that are impossible
in
>plastic moulding - so your metal figs tend to be *much* more detailed.
>
>Adrian
>
>
>