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Plastic moulding process


USNCenturion

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I know basically how a model goes from discussion, to art, to mock-up, to production etc, but I was wondering if anyone could describe the actual moulding process? You read in several threads here how expensive plastic moulds are, how they are difficult to change, how they wear out, and the like. I thought it would be interesting to read more about all this, and what difficulties they create and avoid. Like why can’t they just replace an unpopular bit on a sprue? How long does a mold last and how often are they simply remade? Why is the process and mold so expensive?

 

I’d love to hear if any of you have experience or information concerning this topic. I think it would help me or others give GW some leeway when we mutter to ourselves ‘why can’t they just do this or that’ in regards to new kits. As always, if this topic already exists and my search prayers weren’t effective enough, please delete and disregard.

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At my last employer our average expenditure on a new, fairly bog-standard mould was around £10,000; however, the process was fairly basic in modern terms, and we didn't use any fancy digital technology to cut them as they were still done by pantographing, i.e. by hand. Pantographing was the industry standard practice right up until the 2010s, when the shift began to digital tech, with Games Workshop being one of the first companies to embrace that. In the last few years we've had companies like Warlord Games, Victrix and Wargames Atlantic enter the digital frontier as well.

 

Renedra has several posts on Facebook detailing how they cut their moulds - including a video of pantographing in action, and how moulds are laid out for production. It's worth checking them out.

 

Breaking your queries down a bit more;

 

Cost - as mentioned before, the moulds can cost as low as £10,000 for a bog-standard entry. However, the better the material quality and the larger the size the higher the cost, which is when they start to creep up to the £100,000 mark and beyond. It's a fairly open secret that Games Workshop use high quality moulds nowadays, with a single mould servicing multiple products.

 

Changing - once you've created a mould you can't physically change it - you've carved into the material, after all. If you want to "replace" it you're looking at replacing the whole thing, so you're stuck buying an entire new mould.

 

Wear & Tear  - largely dependent on the material construction of the mould, as well as how frequently it's being used / maintained. Older moulds will almost always show signs of significant wear and tear when it comes down to the silicon moulding used for resin / metal miniatures, however I can't personally speak for what a metal mould will look like having never seen one in person. That said, the easiest way to determine the state of a metal mould as a customer is to compare the miniatures produced in one over a period of time, i.e. the appearance of significant mould lines and so on.

 

That's a fairly basic explanation on the matter. There's a bit more nuance to each subject such as the differences between master and production moulds for resin / metal miniatures.

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Random possibly interesting fact: Back in the Time of Doing Things By Hand™, GW used to sculpt the plastic models at 3x final size (known as a "3-up").  The final mould was produced by tracing across the sculpt with what was essentially a drill bit on reduction gears to produce the correct final size

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Random possibly interesting fact: Back in the Time of Doing Things By Hand™, GW used to sculpt the plastic models at 3x final size (known as a "3-up").  The final mould was produced by tracing across the sculpt with what was essentially a drill bit on reduction gears to produce the correct final size

 

Yep, that's pantographing! I tracked down Renedra's video demonstrating it in action. They also have two pictures demonstrating the 3-ups and mould layout in progress.

 

Bit of ancient history in action.

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I remember seeing the old big mock-ups, with bits of card and whatnot slapped onto the green stuff. Things do come a long way.

 

I can’t believe a mould costs that much! Am I right in understanding that they have to pay that amount at least once for basically every plastic kit they make? I always wonder to myself why not just make this unit or that upgrade set; now I know it’s not a shortage of ideas and desire, but cold hard cash considerations.

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The biggest cost reduction for GW from designing the sprue layout and associated mould imprint digitally has been the almost complete elimination of failed moulds.

 

Previously the only way to KNOW if the layout was right, if any pieces would snag when the mould opened and if there were enough correctly placed injection points was to make the mould and use it. Obviously experienced designers and fabricators could have good guesses and make decent judgements in advance, but they didn't know. From my conversations with guys that have worked there or still do the failure rate when they were really trying to push their limits before going digital was around 1:3-1:4. Aside from the costs associated with the physical aspect of this, the time lost in the process of reviewing and redesigning the mould was also pretty high.

 

Now with the software they use it allows them to simulate the outcome for each mould so they can move pieces around, rotate pieces and move injection points as needed, all without needing to have the actual steel manufactured.

 

All this having been said, they're still a substantial investment and can't be "tweaked" to allow for minor changes, the only option is a completely new steel mould.

 

The lifespan for GW moulds is high, and would be measured in number of uses not time. The Rhino chassis I remember from my time with GW was the quickest one ever to pay for itself, to the extent that for quite sometime they were jokingly used as the "standard pricing unit", so a new product would be priced for all markets in a number of Rhinos.

 

Rik

Edited by Rik Lightstar
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I remember seeing the old big mock-ups, with bits of card and whatnot slapped onto the green stuff. Things do come a long way.

 

I can’t believe a mould costs that much! Am I right in understanding that they have to pay that amount at least once for basically every plastic kit they make? I always wonder to myself why not just make this unit or that upgrade set; now I know it’s not a shortage of ideas and desire, but cold hard cash considerations.

The cost for a kit would depend on the number of sprues that can fit on a mould. So for a smaller product like the plastic single sprue characters they'll be reproduced multiple times on each use. For larger kits like the Superheavies, it's possible they'll only be producing one kit for each action of the mould.

 

Rik

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So, panthographing vs. digital mould generation. I assume this is digitally driven cnc or laser cutting vs how panthographing was described? How much does that save (outside of failed moulds)? Is that saving eaten up by using higher quality moulds or is that pure profit (including the savings for non-failing moulds)?
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So, panthographing vs. digital mould generation. I assume this is digitally driven cnc or laser cutting vs how panthographing was described? How much does that save (outside of failed moulds)? Is that saving eaten up by using higher quality moulds or is that pure profit (including the savings for non-failing moulds)?

If I'm understanding your question, no digital in this sense means digital sculpting.

Gone are the days of sculpting by hand in green stuff and miliputt.

Now they sculpt with a computer, using software like Zbrush and Fusion 360.

A physical mock up is never sculpted. They do however 3d print the models to be painted before the metal mold is made, so the heavy metal team can get the units ready for display.

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So, panthographing vs. digital mould generation. I assume this is digitally driven cnc or laser cutting vs how panthographing was described? How much does that save (outside of failed moulds)? Is that saving eaten up by using higher quality moulds or is that pure profit (including the savings for non-failing moulds)?

The other savings are:

 

Time across the team

 

Rapid prototyping through 3d printing gets models to the painting teams quicker as well as allowing for visual checks across many individuals within a few hours.

 

The economy of each mould has been improved massively, look at the number of components on each sprue to see what I mean, on many kits they've reduced from 3 or 4 sprues to two or been able to squeeze in parts to make a dual kit reducing their quantity of products and the perceived value of each kit.

 

Rik

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I'm pretty sure that they're still externally manufactured, and that the cost would be for manufacture and supply, the £100k figure was someone else's though so I wouldn't be able to comment on actually costs, beyond that they're surprisingly expensive.

 

It's pretty hard to put a cost on design work with things being team efforts and ranges often being designed as an entire project rather than just an individual kit. Shared resources with digital design also change this up dramatically, something that's brand new has few or no existing components in the library whereas Marines for example are more often a case of re-posing and changing up the details and iconography.

 

Rik

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A few years back I did looking into the cost of plastic tooling for a model railway project and I can confirm that the prices being discussed here are definitely in the right ballpark.

 

A big factor in the variation of price is the material the mold is made from. The harder the metal, the more expensive it is to tool but the longer it will last in use. The upper rage of figures being quoted (circa £100,000) would be for a hard steel tooling. This the most expensive kind but will last for around 100,000 impressions. GW clearly plan to keep selling kits until the heat-death of the universe so this kind of investment makes sense. It also explains how so many vehicle kits are still serviceable after 20-ish yeas in production.

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Great thread.  This is one of those lines of learning where it recolours everything I already knew about Warhammer.

 

Really appreciate both the very precise, high quality questions and the also very precise, high quality answers.

 

All this having been said, they're still a substantial investment and can't be "tweaked" to allow for minor changes, the only option is a completely new steel mould.

The lifespan for GW moulds is high, and would be measured in number of uses not time. The Rhino chassis I remember from my time with GW was the quickest one ever to pay for itself, to the extent that for quite sometime they were jokingly used as the "standard pricing unit", so a new product would be priced for all markets in a number of Rhinos.

Rik

 

 

+++ This is the best explanation of STCs I've ever heard +++

 

 

When you were talking about how the Rhino mold became the gold standard by which future designs would be measured by, I started thinking of the lore talking about the very reliable Rhino STC.  It was extensible like you can slap on a turret and now you got a Predator or a Razorback (also just as a player I like how you can stack Rhinos to easily transport them, they're like LEGOs).

 

So that's why the Mechanicus loves to stick to certain construction templates that they never deviate from.  I'm not saying GW designed its lore based on its business practices like some sort of meta-joke, but when you're designing games professionally they have to keep things like the molds in mind for work...it's kinda like "so that's where the idea comes from."

 

 

+++ But it also does explain a lot about how GW works +++

 

 

I'd say "GW's business practices", but "business practices" implies "screwing customers over", and all I really mean is how GW operates day to day, year by year.  Like we all have habits from work.

 

GW, for a company that calls itself Games WORKSHOP (rather than Citadel, for example), has a very weird cost structure.  On the surface it seems to spend too low on developmental stuff.  To just give you a quick comparison:

 

  • Its Product & Supply division, which apparently includes all the design studios, account for only about 4% of its Operating Expenditure
  • Its Retail division, which includes all the official Warhammer Stores (not FLGSs), accounts for...50+%

 

I joke to my friends GW should be called Games WREEEtailer instead.  But this explains why.  This is like all the costs are not shown in Operating Expenditures, instead it's in these molds, which are classified as an Asset, which you'd stick in a separate cost called Property, Plant and Equipment.  To give an example...it's like how in late 8th/early 9th sometimes you don't just use unit points costs/Power Levels to buy units, sometimes you spend Command Points to upgrade a Marine HQ?  They're both types of costs but it's from 2 different pools, in fact it's a little hidden?  It's kinda like that.

 

A single mold would be a huge cost for a small company, which GW was until JUST 5 YEARS AGO.  Roughly speaking, GW's profits this year should be 10 times what it was 10 years ago; in 1 year they'll make a decade's worth of profit a decade ago.  But if you were to anthropomorphise GW, he'd be a billionaire who grew up poor, but saved up, and now even though he has billions, still cuts out supermarket coupons to save pennies because that's just how he's wired from years of living like that.  In fact, it's likely the secret of his success, so you're not gonna change that.

 

I think GW still sweats over each mold.  It's not just about the sculpting, but I bet all the veteran guys have got this internal calculator on how many minis they gotta sell to justify a mold, like a Rhino-based metric that Brother Rik mentioned.  That's responsibility.  The downside is they might not want to take creative risks...but that's what Forge World is for, their resin-casting uses less expensive molds, for that sort of experimentation.  It might be a habit they want to change.

 

Important Edit - I just read Brother Karhedron's post, that 100,000 impressions figure.  I literally just pounded the table at that.  That's perfect.

 

So you can have many different kits on a mold.  You can have multiple copies of a kit on a mold.  But as soon as you put it 1 on, you're thinking, "can I sell 100k units of that sprue?"  That 100k is like the minimum threshold before you even consider go or no-go with a project...and even then, you're still looking for the best, most promising thing to go to production, but you have this gut feel to even dedicate thought to a 100k+ units project.

 

We here at B&C have 50,000 registered members.  Most of us are still active, many are not.  There's also those Brothers who are invisible to us as non-registered but are every bit just as dedicated to The Hobby.  Considering we're B&C, most of us have a Marine army or some sort (like I wanted to say I stopped playing Marines after I quit 30k...and even then that's not true, as my go-to Kill Team is Deathwatch.  In short, lots of Marine players here, the "duh" is silent.

 

We're DEFINITELY NOT the only Marine players in the world, but all GW has to say is, "will those 50k idiots...I mean zealots on B&C buy at least 2 units of Heavy Intercessors each ON AVERAGE?"  Some will buy 0.  Some will buy 10.  But Mean average, can we get 2?  If so, suddenly GW will consider it, we ourselves here can justify the cost.  For something like Heavy Intercessors which should go so well with the Iron Hands Chapter Tactic like omg, that's a no brainer.

 

But how about something a bit more boutique, like...say...a Forge World Dreadnought?  Werlll, somebody must have proposed that for the Contemptor Dreadnoughts because we have those plastic ones now.  But what about...a plastic Leviathan Dreadnought?  Not wishlisting because I don't need another Leviathan, but I could see it.  And to dream the impossible dream...what about a Thunderhawk?  I know B&C players like to just talk, because if we all did everything we said we would there'd be Squat armies now, but can we reach that 100k threshold, can we get the 50,000 B&C members to buy 2 plastic Thunderhawks each on average?  And I reckon the answer is, not yet, but that's the type of napkin math.

 

And here's why, GW has grown about 3 times in Revenue in the last five years, and growing.  They're selling 3 times more stuff than during the long flat period.  That 100k calculation is constantly shifting in that it's like 3 times easier now to reach that figure from before.  The maths for a plastic Thunderhawk are are becoming more likely than the maths against it.  A plastic Sisters of Battle army WAS the impossible dream before and now it's just a faction, hell, they're getting their Baby Dreadknights.

 

Anyway, very interesting data point.

 

Also, even IF this is the case, and THEN it is a problem, it's not the biggest concern yet.  For the next few months it's all the stores being closed and shipping being limited, that's the problem for a bit.  But very interesting.  It really does fill in a lot of gaps I had in my understanding, NOT so much that molds cost money, but the way GW thinks as from that Rhino story...that's like Tradecraft.

 

Great stuff.

Edited by N1SB
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Just a note on N1SB's analysis, you don't typically need the 50k to buy, you just need to make 100k £/€/$ with the sales.

For example if a kit costs 50€ and it is all from the same mould and for example their margin is 50% of the price, you need 4k people to buy your kit to cover mould costs.

The thing is, once you start production, the mould lasts a while and production costs are not high, so margins once the initial cost is paid are quite high.

There are many ways to accomplish that, either a large mould is used for several copies of the same kit (single kit bears the costs, but with production output being higher), you combine sprues from different kits into a single mould (easier to cover the costs as sales from different kits can cover the moulding cost, but you run the risk of one kit being less popular and you end up with lots of stock of one kit to produce the other or others).

Smaller sprues, like characters are often multiplied on a single mould, which might explain why they seemed to have lots of stock of certain marine characters last year with the "blind boxes".

Not all kits use the larger 100k sprues, but very small moulds are not cost effective, so you will usually have something like mid range moulds for a better cost/repayment ratio.

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So you can have many different kits on a mold.  You can have multiple copies of a kit on a mold.  But as soon as you put it 1 on, you're thinking, "can I sell 100k units of that sprue?"  That 100k is like the minimum threshold before you even consider go or no-go with a project...and even then, you're still looking for the best, most promising thing to go to production, but you have this gut feel to even dedicate thought to a 100k+ units project.

 

It gets even more interesting than that. As well as the costs of the mold (which make up the majority of your "fixed" costs), you also have the cost it takes to produce each sprue. These include raw materials, electricity, packing and distribution. Manufacturers have a fine juggling act to make, do they sell at a higher price and try to recoup the costs of the mold quickly or do they lower the prices and spread the fixed costs over a longer period in the hope of selling higher volumes?

 

I don't know how GW operate but in model railway circles, the objective is for each production run to turn a modest profit (around the 15% mark is typical but not universal. This means that production run 1 will need to cover the fixed costs, the unit costs and provide a modest profit. The good news is that if the model is successful, future production runs will be very profitable as the fixed costs will be recouped and only the unit costs will remain. The price will likely be the same meaning that the profit margin is far higher on these subsequent runs.

 

Like I say, I don't know how many of each sprue GW expect to sell but it does show that old favourites like the Rhino and Land Raider are juicy cash-cows for them as the toolings will be long since paid off and each one sold is highly profitable for them. It also explains why for many companies, their molds are their greatest physical assets.

 

 

EDIT:- Just beaten to it by GreenScorpion. :smile.:

Edited by Karhedron
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@GreenScorpion has hit on the "Mystery of Large Kit Pricing" for an Imperial or Eldar Knight for example or any of the AoS Centrepiece kits. they demand an entire mould to EACH kit, so you only get to produce the (assumed) 100,000 units of them, where as you might get two or three times as many Intercessor or Bladeguard kits from the equivalent amount of steel and machine time.

 

Keep in mind that machine time for actually stamping these kits has been at a premium for a long time and until the new factory is fully operational (like the Deathstar) will continue to be. So each time you make an Imperial Knight or a Baneblade you're NOT making Intercessors or whatever the latest hot hotness you're selling loads of might be.

 

Multiple kits on a single mould is possible of course, but it requires you to make both kits at the same time so they need to sell at VERY similar levels. 

 

All of this I suspect is a large part of the reason for dual kits and full options in kits rather than upgrade sprues.

 

Rik

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This is a very interesting thread!

 

I’m wondering what impact the life of a mould has on GWs decisions to revamp factions. Is it worth replacing a worn out mould with exactly the same or do they take that opportunity to redesign and update that range?

 

There seem like there’d be costs and benefits with either approach. If you do replace like for like then you’ve got to be really confident of selling enough of what could be a dated kit to pay it off. If you update the models that’s a longer delay and more investment in terms of designers etc.

 

It’s probably a safe bet that the marine moulds make back their cost fastest and also wear out quickest which might be one of the reasons their kits get a lot of refreshes (aside from being the poster boys).

 

On the other hand, you’ve got really ancient kits like ork boyz or cadian infantry. Even though 100,000 runs is a large number, it seems like those kits should surely have gone past that number before now. If they have it means they either replaced the moulds as is, or the moulds happened to last longer than they should have.

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I’m wondering what impact the life of a mould has on GWs decisions to revamp factions. Is it worth replacing a worn out mould with exactly the same or do they take that opportunity to redesign and update that range?

To take the Rhino and Land Raider again as examples, it looks like the models usually become obsolete before the molds wear out. How many Marine players have more than 2 Land Raiders? Take one of GW's best selling kits, the humble Tactical Squad. The MPK was first introduced in 3rd edition in 1998. A new kit was produced in either 5th or 6th and is still with us today. It is possible the molds for that had worn out after 10 years or it could have been GW wanted to add the extra special and heavy weapons that could be taken to make modeller's lives easier.

 

Either way, it shows the risk of completely obsoleting an existing kit. It no longer sells and no longer generates money. This is why GW would far rather introduce new kits and even new factions than replace the vehicle kits that date from the late 90s. The Dark Eldar have received the Venom and the Harlies have their large jetbikes yet the ancient Vyper still soldiers on, despite the fact that its crew haven't resembled contemporary Guardians for over 20 years. The DE Raider was one of the few kits to receive a like-for-like replacement when the DE were updated as they received a significantly update aesthetic.

 

TLDR: GW would rather produce a new unit or even a new faction than replace an existing kit like-for-like in most cases.

 

On the other hand, you’ve got really ancient kits like ork boyz or cadian infantry. Even though 100,000 runs is a large number, it seems like those kits should surely have gone past that number before now. If they have it means they either replaced the moulds as is, or the moulds happened to last longer than they should have.

Hard steel molds are usually good for at least 100,000 impressions but like a lot of guarantees, you may get some that well exceed that margin and seem to just keep soldiering on. It would be interesting to compare a recent impression with one from when the molds were new to see if any deterioration was visible.

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So, panthographing vs. digital mould generation. I assume this is digitally driven cnc or laser cutting vs how panthographing was described? How much does that save (outside of failed moulds)? Is that saving eaten up by using higher quality moulds or is that pure profit (including the savings for non-failing moulds)?

If I'm understanding your question, no digital in this sense means digital sculpting.

Gone are the days of sculpting by hand in green stuff and miliputt.

Now they sculpt with a computer, using software like Zbrush and Fusion 360.

A physical mock up is never sculpted. They do however 3d print the models to be painted before the metal mold is made, so the heavy metal team can get the units ready for display.

Yes, I understand that they don't produce a 'master' model that is used to panthograph to the mould anymore. I'm sorry I was being unclear, I'll try to re-phrase.

What I was trying to understand was, if the panthographing process was what drove the costs of mould making, due to the setup needed to do this and its (in my imagination) relatively imprecise nature. Versus just feeding a digital 3d model (of the sprues) into a cnc machine or laser cutter.

 

I remember the Archon guys who made the Rampart Kickstarters got 176k on the first and 323k on the second run. They made a bunch of moulds using a laser cutting process and the detail seems to be quite good and they even talked about broken moulds needed to be remade. I don't remember if they said what material was used. Info might be in one of their updates...

 

Just wondering how one box set mould costing up to 100k adds up with that.

 

Polish labour must be a LOT less expensive than English/Chinese labour. XD

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I remember the Archon guys who made the Rampart Kickstarters got 176k on the first and 323k on the second run. They made a bunch of moulds using a laser cutting process and the detail seems to be quite good and they even talked about broken moulds needed to be remade. I don't remember if they said what material was used. Info might be in one of their updates...

 

Just wondering how one box set mould costing up to 100k adds up with that.

 

Polish labour must be a LOT less expensive than English/Chinese labour. XD

Polish labour is closer to English than Chinese but there are many different types of moulds and Archon might be using cheaper materials that last less.

A big part of the cost comes from the actual metal used for the mould and the tooling to create it. High precision cutting tools that work on metals are very expensive and it takes a while to cut through the material, if you want it to last.

For example, for PVC moulds you usually use aluminium instead of steel and those moulds are way cheaper, thus the reason smaller companies make some parts in pvc.

Keep in mind that specific types of aluminium or steel can be a lot more expensive, based on production methods and base materials to be mixed in to create the specific alloy.

Most steel that is good for handling liquids is not necessarily the best for constant mechanic strain and some steel alloys are too rugged to make adequate miniatures (you would notice ups and downs on a supposedly flat surface for example).

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You're both correct, and also right for pointing these things out. Let me share some numbers I was toying with to prove you correct, then I'll talk about the alternative take I'm having.

Just a note on N1SB's analysis, you don't typically need the 50k to buy, you just need to make 100k £/€/$ with the sales.

For example if a kit costs 50€ and it is all from the same mould and for example their margin is 50% of the price, you need 4k people to buy your kit to cover mould costs.

The thing is, once you start production, the mould lasts a while and production costs are not high, so margins once the initial cost is paid are quite high.

There are many ways to accomplish that, either a large mould is used for several copies of the same kit (single kit bears the costs, but with production output being higher), you combine sprues from different kits into a single mould (easier to cover the costs as sales from different kits can cover the moulding cost, but you run the risk of one kit being less popular and you end up with lots of stock of one kit to produce the other or others).

Smaller sprues, like characters are often multiplied on a single mould, which might explain why they seemed to have lots of stock of certain marine characters last year with the "blind boxes".

Not all kits use the larger 100k sprues, but very small moulds are not cost effective, so you will usually have something like mid range moulds for a better cost/repayment ratio.

It gets even more interesting than that. As well as the costs of the mold (which make up the majority of your "fixed" costs), you also have the cost it takes to produce each sprue. These include raw materials, electricity, packing and distribution. Manufacturers have a fine juggling act to make, do they sell at a higher price and try to recoup the costs of the mold quickly or do they lower the prices and spread the fixed costs over a longer period in the hope of selling higher volumes?

I don't know how GW operate but in model railway circles, the objective is for each production run to turn a modest profit (around the 15% mark is typical but not universal. This means that production run 1 will need to cover the fixed costs, the unit costs and provide a modest profit. The good news is that if the model is successful, future production runs will be very profitable as the fixed costs will be recouped and only the unit costs will remain. The price will likely be the same meaning that the profit margin is far higher on these subsequent runs.

Like I say, I don't know how many of each sprue GW expect to sell but it does show that old favourites like the Rhino and Land Raider are juicy cash-cows for them as the toolings will be long since paid off and each one sold is highly profitable for them. It also explains why for many companies, their molds are their greatest physical assets.

To recap, you're both talking about break-even and mark-up. Let's prepare some back-of-napkins maths, using the figures we got:

  • Let's say GW follows that industry standard of 15% profit to just justify a project
  • A fixed cost of £100,000 for the mould
  • Then let's deal with a hypothetical £50 box of minis

Here's where I bring the latest verified information from GW's half-year report:

gallery_57329_13636_10703.jpg

The gross margin is what you Brother Karhedron was talking about, that's the raw materials, electricity, labour going into each unit produced, the incremental costs. GW hovered at around 70% for years, now increased it to a tidy 75%. That means if you paid for a £10.00 box of Easy-to-Build snapfit miniatures, it only cost GW £2.50 to make.

+++ Back of Napkins Maths while I'm sleep-deprived +++

I'm sleepy, but I want to do this before I go to bed.

Let's treat this very reasonable 15% profit goal. When I do these, I almost think of it as a tax set by the CEO to pay to shareholders.

Easier to show than explain. I want a £100,000 mould, but I imagine myself paying £115,000, to set aside that profit take later. This is the cost I have to cover by making AND selling more kits. So let's look at the kits.

I'm selling £50.00 kits made from this mold. Gross margin of 75%, awesome, imma make the money back easy! But then the CEO wants his 15% on top of that or he breaks my kneecaps, so that drops down from 75% down 15% to 60%. £50.00 x 60% = £30.00, so it's like every time I sell a kit worth £50.00, I let the CEO wet his beak, I'm left with still a very reasonable £30.00 I use to pay back the cost of the mould.

Thus finally, £115,000 ÷ £30.00 = 3,834 kits I gotta sell. Very close to the ~4,000 Brother Green Scorpion's estimate. Now the flaw...

...we're imagining a very small mould that can just create 1 kit that we sell for £50.00.

@GreenScorpion has hit on the "Mystery of Large Kit Pricing" for an Imperial or Eldar Knight for example or any of the AoS Centrepiece kits. they demand an entire mould to EACH kit, so you only get to produce the (assumed) 100,000 units of them, where as you might get two or three times as many Intercessor or Bladeguard kits from the equivalent amount of steel and machine time.

Keep in mind that machine time for actually stamping these kits has been at a premium for a long time and until the new factory is fully operational (like the Deathstar) will continue to be. So each time you make an Imperial Knight or a Baneblade you're NOT making Intercessors or whatever the latest hot hotness you're selling loads of might be.

Multiple kits on a single mould is possible of course, but it requires you to make both kits at the same time so they need to sell at VERY similar levels.

All of this I suspect is a large part of the reason for dual kits and full options in kits rather than upgrade sprues.

If a mould can produce a whole Imperial Knight that sells for (just under) £100, then you only need to sell ~2,000 kits.

Now...let's say I can price a plastic Thunderhawk at, say, £200. Why, that'd be only ~1,000 kits.

+++ Now here's what I meant by my alternative take +++

The above suggests any Warhammer kit that sells in the thousands, not even tens of thousands, can justify the mould cost with the industry standard of 15% that Brother Karhedron mentioned (great tip, btw). But that high quality mould can still print 100,000.

Earlier I compared the GW CEO to like a billionaire who still clips coupons for supermarket shopping. A mind like that, if he bought something he can get 100,000 uses out of, he will use it 100,000 times.

Whether you're a GW critic or you're a GW apologist, I think both sides would agree, GW WILL want to print that full 100,000!

I reckon this may be why we still see those hideous Catachan Guardsmen kits that are still not refreshed, why we're not seeing plastic minis for the other Regiments like Vostroyans or something. They probably had re-made a mould at some point, but it's still got a few thousand uses left, and they're milking every last impression before considering a new one.

I'm not saying I'm right, btw. I can already disprove my theory. What about all those limited edition characters, like the upcoming Uriel Ventris? Or that Terminator Chaplain for new Warhammer Stores or anniversaries? There's 500+ Warhammer Stores in the world, they're not selling 200 anniversary Terminator Chaplains in each one.

+++ TL;DR +++

Plastic Thunderhawks. Never stop never stopping to dream the impossible dream.

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Continuing from what N1SB mentioned, one factor is also that they want to completely use the moulds, even after they paid their initial costs times x.

One of the reasons weighing on making a new unit is related with the amount of expected sales, in order to use the mould completely.

With the limited edition characters they likely use the same mould for several of the models planned for the year and while it might not seem that there are many around, they might be less limited in most cases than advertised. That aside, the higher price typically means the mould is profitable regardless and likely GW headquarters is filled up with the remaining thousands of limited edition characters somewhere, who knows :smile.:

They might also use materials that are less resistant for those models with lower numbers, something that gets unusable after 20k uses for example. Why go with the most premium material if you don't want to produce 100k? Less resistant doesn't mean less quality while producing, just that it wears down faster.

 

Edit: Please keep in mind that not all projects need to have the same starting cost/mould and they will certainly adapt based on what they want to achieve. Also in many cases they might have more than one mould for a single kit, which is likely the case for many space marine units, in order to keep up with demand (pre-covid demand levels).

Edited by GreenScorpion
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I remember the Archon guys who made the Rampart Kickstarters got 176k on the first and 323k on the second run. They made a bunch of moulds using a laser cutting process and the detail seems to be quite good and they even talked about broken moulds needed to be remade. I don't remember if they said what material was used. Info might be in one of their updates...

 

Just wondering how one box set mould costing up to 100k adds up with that.

 

Polish labour must be a LOT less expensive than English/Chinese labour. XD

Polish labour is closer to English than Chinese but there are many different types of moulds and Archon might be using cheaper materials that last less.

A big part of the cost comes from the actual metal used for the mould and the tooling to create it. High precision cutting tools that work on metals are very expensive and it takes a while to cut through the material, if you want it to last.

For example, for PVC moulds you usually use aluminium instead of steel and those moulds are way cheaper, thus the reason smaller companies make some parts in pvc.

Keep in mind that specific types of aluminium or steel can be a lot more expensive, based on production methods and base materials to be mixed in to create the specific alloy.

Most steel that is good for handling liquids is not necessarily the best for constant mechanic strain and some steel alloys are too rugged to make adequate miniatures (you would notice ups and downs on a supposedly flat surface for example).

Yes, I'm aware about labour costs, excuse the snark. :wink:

 

 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/archonstudio/rampart-magnetized-modular-terrain-for-tabletop/posts

 

Anyway, here's the first Rampart KS. Check out the Updates section. They show off some of their production process in image and video form. They're showing off actual moulds (which they call tools) and in some videos the actual cutting process (which is regular cnc after all, dunno where I got that laser-cutting idea from...). Quite interesting. They also claim to have/use higher detail resolution than 'that one UK competitor'. They use 0.2mm, while they're capable to go down to 0.1mm, while the competition uses 0.25mm (I'm sure GW could use higher resolutions as well, but there is probably some calculation regarding failure rates or something like that being that much larger scale a production this is based on.).

 

And they keep talking about re-cutting tools, one of which takes a weekend or roughly 90 work hours. So, they're probably using cheaper materials or it has to do with them cutting the moulds themselves? Their KS budget seems to be high enough to keep buying more custom-made machines and cutting a ton of moulds (Their 'foundry is also used for their "Starcide" game and probably also for the "Dungeons & Lasers" KSes, so they're is likely more funding from more KSes and maybe other sources.) Sure, not as many as GW in total, in this case for two products plus a few bonus sprues.

 

There might be more information to be found in all their other KSes (I didn't check), they seem to be comparatively open about their process, which might be interesting to visitors of this thread. :wink:

Edited by gorg_graggel
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