Wyrd Facebook wrote:From the Blog of Eric J.
Going Plastic
So, if you ever are in a place where you are making metal miniatures as a business, and you have the say those words "we should switch over to plastics" know that you have made a life changing decision. No, not like getting married or having children or even getting accepted to college or that dream job, but it will change things.
So lets go back about a month before those famous words. Here at wyrd central we were sitting and looking at the costs of our minis, the costs of metal, and getting more than a little upset about how the future looked. Straight to the point, the cost of metal has gone up nearly 80% in just the last 2 years, while the cost of our minis had gone up more like 20%, and with metal not slowing down any time soon, we were going to have to push through a rather significant price increase if we were to continue on like we were. Added to that was the fact that we just started producing Avatars which were bigger, heavier, and in all ways more metal than our standard minis. Something had to change!
So we start researching our options. Plastics, Resin, other metals, etc... Luckily we were in a position where we could see what a couple other larger companies had done before us, and largely we wanted to build and improve on the decisions we had seen them make. We knew why they made them, but we hoped we could do better.
So lets look at the options:
Alternate Metals - While we could maintain all our same processes (sculpting, molding, etc...), the price of alternates were going up just as fast, and in general, cheaper metal meant cheaper looking minis...VETO
Resin - Again, resin can be use with all our same processes. We have of course toyed around with Resin in some of our Avatars to keep their costs down, and with fairly satisfactory results, however we avoided any small pieces or complex molds, because of a number of issues that we found cropped up. Many of these issues have been widely publicized in the troubles certain other companies have had with resin minis. Combined with how toxic resin is, how easily it breaks, the fact that the price difference was strangely not that much different from metal... so veto.
PVC based plastic - VERY alluring because in a lot of ways we could still keep a lot of our same process, and while the up front costs are higher than metal we DO get out from under the weight (literally) of metal and those costs... The sticking point is quality here...sadly. Bendy, squishy, doesn't hold the detail well enough. Sadly - Veto
Polystyrene - We have now switched over to all new processes, digital sculpting, plastic injection moulding, etc... SCAREY! It's a big leap of faith to go ALL new when you actually have the old processes figured out. Unfortunately with the previous 3 options veto'd we knew this was our future. On the bright side, we get away from metal! So now comes the challenges:
How do we get these things digitally sculpted when all we've dealt with in the past are physical sculptors... Long story short - we do everything we can to find the best talent (notice I'm not giving away all the details here )
Next: WHAT TYPE of plastic, because it turns out there are a lot of options.
1) A basic standard level poly. This does the trick, holds detail rather well, is cheap. The downside is that it can melt in really hot cars, can bend and break rather easily
2) High Impact Poly. This is a step up from the basic. The plastic is denser, the molecules somewhat woven together to resist breaking, slightly higher melting point. All good things, but slightly more expensive
3) ABS. Now this stuff is even denser, with tightly woven molecules, extra sharp detail, significantly higher melting point, will be VERY hard to break and even when bent, remembers it's original shape. In a lot of ways it has a lot of the strengths of metal, combined with a lot of the advantages of plastic. Drawback - about twice the cost of standard poly
SO? What did we do? We picked ABS, and figured out a way to do it so that we wouldn't have to increase the price to you at all. In fact, not only do we not have to increase the prices now or in the near future, we can now create bigger, more intricate, more impressive pieces without the exponentially increases in cost due to the bulk of metal involved. Additionally it lets us give you a ton of options, alternate heads/arms/weapons without any increase in cost. Win!
If you are thinking (as I did), isn't ABS that stuff my drain pipe is made out of? The answer is yes. It's also the stuff Lego's are made out of, and if you've ever gotten the corner of a lego block in your heal, you KNOW if can hold sharp detail. And just look at that lego logo on the top of each little peg...detail! Of course with a slightly etched surface it's not the perfect reflective feel of lego, so it will hold paint just fine, don't you worry
Anyways, that's a bit about the process of the switch to plastics, and how we ended up at this place and the decisions involved. We knew when we switched, we had to give you all the best we could, in terms of sculpting and materials, as well as price. We're pretty proud of what we've accomplished, and I really hope you all really enjoy the results of our work. I have a desk full of these new models and I seriously can not wait to share them with you all!!
Enjoy! And I look forward to hearing more from all of you what you think.
Eric
Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2014 10:18 pm
