Game Design and Project Resources: The Workshops Quarter > Fox Box
Casting and sculpting for Fox Box and myself
Flamekebab:
I've been running my own little business for a while now - Fox Box. It started out as a bitz company specialising in Orks and whilst I don't intend to stop selling other kits as bitz I started to get interested in making my own parts. Lacking the knowledge and equipment to do my own casting I had a friend help me with casting. That was all well and good until I moved away from Edinburgh. No longer could I walk to his flat and pick up copies.
So over the last few months I've put together my own casting rig:
It has a vacuum pump for pulling a strong vacuum and a hefty compressor to quickly bring it up to 60 PSI. As long as I design my mould correctly, use the right amount of resin, and don't dilly dally I can get perfect casts. That is to say no bubbles, no blisters, barely any mould lines (and often none at all - it depends on the mould design).
Here's the first mould I made, a copy of a sculpt I did:
It worked but turned out to be needlessly cautious. The amount of sprue is totally unnecessary for my technique, that sort of kidney.
Here's a copy from that mould:
Here's a shot of a couple of copies from a different mould design:
They were cast together in a single mould but it has its own issues (extracting from it is time sensitive - too soon and stuff bends, too late and it snaps) so I'm planning on creating a replacement for it in a bit.
More recently I've been attempting to scale up the copying of these parts:
The problem with casting is that I can do lots of resin at once, assuming I have moulds for it. Unfortunately my pressure chamber is round. It's a bit tricky to tetris stuff together and it slows things down. That might sound like a minor annoyance but 30 seconds makes all the difference when the resin only has 2 - 4 minutes until it starts to cure (the range depends on a variety of factors including temperature). If I want to degass the resin and then put pressure on it I need about two minutes, sometimes more, sometimes less.
Sooo, if I'm faffing about pouring resin into lots of little moulds that can easily take a minute to a minute and a half. Erk!
The solution? As with many other things in life, the answer is cake.
Well, there's also the side effect of how firmly the silicone and parts were stuck in there:
I've yet to put together moulds for the heads and weapons but they should be comparatively easy.
Jubal:
Ooh, very nice indeed!
I'd love to try casting at some point - I'm going to make getting back into sculpting a thing over summer I hope.
So are you intending to get a few new cast kits up on the website sometime in the near future? :)
Flamekebab:
Yep, the plan is to get these things up for sale within the next week. I'm waiting on a new batch of resin and there's a few more moulds to make but it's exciting!
Yesterday I posted some models to another Exilian member to paint for promo shots and similar. I should probably get my new goblins ready for casting too.
Flamekebab:
It's remarkable how incompetent some couriers can be. I'm always at home yet they have the nerve to mark things as "attempted delivery" without even approaching my front door. It's a shame I cannot "attempt payment" when dealing with them...
Lack of resin aside I've been figuring out the best way to make a mould for heads and weapons, two things that would fit on a single "cake slice". I don't really want to make another cake tin full of moulds just yet. Goblins need to be corralled, space ships tidied, things like that.
So instead this mould is going to straddle the top of the cake tin, or attempt to at any rate!
I really hope I can get this stuff sorted soon. It's been ages since I worked on anything else!
Jubal:
Would it be too prying into your trade secrets to ask what sorts of costs making a new set of figures is with this system from sculpt to production? Does the mould-making take ages/is it expensive?
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