There's a common point among the luxury-miniature companies also that you're not paying for the materials, you're paying for the designs and other assorted services attached to the product. Likewise, they're picking the bigger models, which would have exponential materials costs, really.
I've been investigating siocast tech a bit since this announcement. So I can tell you that moulds are cheap and persist for a mean 400 imprints, there's no waste as scrap is 100% recyclable, moulds can be made with metal masters, and that one machine does 30-40 casts per hour. The mould tech seems to be one of the selling points tbh, as 'it ensures very long mould life to guarantee low production costs.' It's pretty efficient tech, all in all. I can see why it's very tempting to CB...
One question I am curious about is the reusability of the material. I have heard it is reusable, but is it reusable in house, (similar to melting down excess metals to be reused in another casting), or something that must be sent back to Siocast to be recycled?
From what I understand you can chop up scrap and add it in with fresh pellets. Not sure if you can make new minis just from scrap.
On the siocast site they say "mix it again with your raw material for an efficient and sustainable production" https://www.siocast.com/10-reasons-why-miniature-companies-switch-from-metal-to-siocast/ https://www.siocast.com/10-reasons-why-companies-switch-from-resin-casting-to-siocast/ If you want to talk about economic things, you should take a look at their 2 short 10 point presentation articles. They have a graph comparing technologies and costs.
Ok first of all, while some will complain, the savings are indeed models remaining the same price, one should remember that metal prices will go up and as CB said they tried to tank the rising costs as much as they could, the reduced cost of the material with the lighter weight will inevitably also bring a reduced shipping cost. Second but most importantly, Please do not attack forum members (and Warcors) as biased, CB send a few models out to a few Warcors for them to showcase the new material to their community, I would assume such openness would be welcomed not frowned upon. The material is recyclable in house and this is important as it minimizes the ecological footprint of the production, from what I understand material loss is equal to metal (around 1-2%) this of course is also great for quality control as bad cists can simply be recycled. I will say it again, this is a new material and a new casting method, yes, there are similarities, but there are also differences, models can only get better designed and cast for this material over time. And finally I need to remind you this thread is not only for discussing but also for asking questions, if coming 11th of August the video released does not answer the questions you thought were important, and they were not asked here on in the other relevant social media channels, please do not come here complaining that they were not asked. I think its the third time I say that...
The general rule for polyamides/nylons is that you can use 20-30% regrind (scrap or sprues that have been ground up) when blending with virgin plastic pellet. So the 1-2% material loss that @psychoticstorm mentions would be easily recoverable. Polymer's with "watery" viscosity are more likely to have flashing issues (since they want to flow into gaps, but I don't think they would cause the other issues we see here. The bubble and detail issues are more likely mold design related - bubbling is usually caused by a lack of proper venting (nowhere for the air to go when the injection happens). Silicone molds are also hard to temperature control (in a metal mold you will usually have water piping or build in electric heaters to maintain a specific mold temp. This can make the polymer more likely to freeze when its injected through a tight joint in the model or if the polymer is trying to fill a detailed feature that is far from the gate (and therefore colder). Unlike some cheaper plastics, polyamide starts to degrade if it is more than about 20 degrees C above its melt temp, so you can't just overheat it to give yourself some buffer. Bless the Maker and His Water. @Vocenoctum I like the idea of doing a promotional giveaway of a model using the new material, maybe bundle it with every purchase over X dollars for a month. Ideally, they would pick a model that was recently released in pewter so people could chose to buy both to compare 1:1.
The should because I will compare the same price of metal TAG and chewing gum TAG and will pick the better material as I can proxy with whatever I want in Infinity as long as the base / general size is right. That's not "openness", that's literally free advertisement. It's CB that is in debt to guys like Dice and others that they review and promote their new thing for free / the miniscule cost of a single mini. And no, receiving something for free, to keep, does bias any reviewer. That's not an attack on the reviewer, I've been a reviewer of hundreds of sample products in my time (mostly RPG sourcebooks our team got from publishers) and I had to be very open with the readers that I got that for free, to keep and they should account for that fact when reading my opinion piece. However much I tried not to, I had to acknowledge that I was inherently biased and the situation wasn't clear. I profited from a review, I stood to gain further from later reviews if the cooperation continued, so to however small degree I profited, ethically I was bound to inform about it. @Muad'dib Thanks for the reply, confirms my supposition.
I am afraid you try semantics here, company gave a sample to some people and brought it out to the community sooner than later, there is no possibility anybody who has one to not have the model given to them and bought it since the release day is really not anytime soon, so nobody would be confused that these people bought it. Now you argue that anybody who is given a model is inevitably and invariably biased and whatever opinion they may have is company propaganda and there is no possibility they would actually like or be indifferent to the material and model, I cannot accept that.
You felt yourself biased, and you've seen others biased, so that's the first step of induction method, of course. But that doesn't neccessarily justify your opinion, since there's no sufficient logical junction between "your experience and point of view" and "pin pointly calling someone biased". If you never meant to attack someone, that's a good thing. But at least according to what I've interpreted, it seems like you are trying to accuse someone by generalizing your own point of view, based on your own feelings out of your own experiences. That's not... a good thing, right?
Oddly, I'm with Nuada a bit on this, at least a bit. I was given the model for free (which I'll be buying anyhow when I order Beyond), so I think it is fair to speculate on my objectivity, just don't be a jerk about it, haha. I happen to be in a unique position where my career (UX design) is built around trying to take a neutral or beginner perspective, and approach things objectively, instead of comparing them to a bias of prior experience. I'm not in the habit of receiving free goods, and have denied reviewing products that I don't have objective experience with (and why I quit writing for Bell of Lost Souls ages ago). Not everyone knows me, but I turned off Google ads and turned down similar things in the past because frankly, nobody in the game industry pays me more than my integrity is worth (which isn't much). I'm thankful that nobody outright called me a liar, and I do think it's too early to say if the material change is a net positive, but I suspect in the long run, not having $100 TAGs due to surging freight and material costs, will be worthwhile. My review of the plastic Vostok is, would someone (new) be disappointed with the quality of this product out if the package; does it stand on it's own. The existence of other pewter miniatures is mostly irrelevant, it isn't a point of comparison because there isn't a pewter option, never had been, and never will be, for the Vostok. This is actually one of my favorite parts of the new plastic. I know that during a normal plastic production process there is a TON of plastic waste, which I'm not thrilled about. If you read my reviews, be it units in Infinity, or products, you'll note I tend to be positive. This is because I don't bother writing about things I don't like. I don't like spending my time that way, and it doesn't make me feel good dwelling on a bad product. If I didn't think the plastic was at least acceptable, I would be pretty much silent on the matter and let the negative voices on the internet do its thing. I don't think my review on it was over the top positive either, I think the plastic is fine, and within my threshold of acceptability.
Up to 10% on fresh resin. And i think IF YOU ARE A MONSTER you can throw your models away in the plastic bin. ... ... Okay, more seriously you can throw away bits and sprue in the plastic bin
If you go to that link and look at the last 25 years, you can correlate to other game manufacturers moving away from metal. The last really big price spike was in the 2010-2011 timeframe, which is around when Games Workshop converted most of their metals to Finecast and when Privateer Press started making larger models out of PVC.
This whole "reviewers are biased" thing rubs me in the wrong way a bit. Reviewer bias is a hot topic in research for a variety of reasons, and as much as we don't like to admit it, there are serious issues there. However, none of these issues translate to the review of toy soldiers. And while conflicts of interest and methods for choosing the reviewer should always be declared (as in - "item was received for free", "item was provided by the review publisher, but name of the reviewer was known to the producer"), doing so is just a practice of good ethics. No one worth his salt will change his opinion over the astonishing bribe of a... single toy soldier. Accusing someone of not declaring that items were received as a promotion is okay, doing that is a matter of good manners. Accusing someone that he is biased because someone gave him a 15 euro gift is just petty, bordering on disrespectful.
You can also find other correlations connected with the maturing of certain technologies. For example the occurrence of businesses who sell only STL files and the lowering of the cost of certain 3D printing technologies and so on.
It's not just about a toy soldier though. It's also not about bribing people. It's a personal investment of time, money and energy into a hobby that appears to be at a major turning point. People who are heavily invested into their hobby are more likely to ignore or downplay issues. It happens all the time across products and media. There are several online communities that outright disallow criticism toward their product and/or the company behind it to maintain a "positive" environment. Damage control is a natural response, so we should be wary of it.
I'm well aware of this hippy-ism and I tend to avoid them like the plague. Their glossy "let's be positive" and "good vibes" clichés infuriate me. However these forums here not only don't disallow criticism, they are sometimes a veritable salt mine. And I'm not sure that the more invested people are more likely to downplay issues in general.
You tend to get both extremes on here, and some of that hippy-ism has been bleeding into the forums for quite some time.
Bah... our summer medium temperature is 25... I am very interested, what temperature limits are for new material
Assuming @Muad'dib guessed it right as being nylon 6, melting point for this is listed by Wikipedia as 220 C. If it degrades significantly at 20 C over that, we're talking about 240 C. His other guess was nylon 12, which melts at about 180 C. Thus, being degradation-prone at 200 C. I'm pretty sure the day our summer medium temperature reaches 200 C we'll be having much more pressing matters to handle than our toy soldiers melting down ;)
