I finally picked up a Vostok model. I should’ve taken some photos on principle but they would have been pretty similar to what others have posted. Overall the cast was slightly less clean than most of my CB metals, and I probably wouldn’t have noticed if the little bits of mold line flash came off more cleanly. The only real exception was the spot up underneath where the right third of the main hull meets the central third, which is a deep recess. The left side was very clean, but the right had a blob of plastic about the size of a fusilier head that filled part of the gap. This taught me two things: It is far, far easier to correct this kind of miscast on Siocast than metal. The deep recess made cleaning the little fluffy bits out really challenging, even with sanding sticks. There was also a little extra material in another spot on the underside but it was much easier to clean up. I also had a slight curve to one of the back legs where it meets the central part, exactly like the last batch of Vostok photos upthread. I tried to straighten it and it snapped cleanly, but as other posters have mentioned, the break was shockingly easy to fix with superglue. You wouldn’t be able to find it now unless I pointed it out. I would recommend that you add fine grit sanding sticks and a brass wire brush to your modeling kit for working with Siocast, and make sure to use a fresh hobby knife blade. The brass wire brush was counterintuitive, but Tom Schadle recommended it on Mayacast (I think?) and I decided to try it myself because YOLO. It worked really well to take off a lot of the little hard-to-remove bits of stuff that were still clinging on in small recesses, but it left a slight residue that came off when I did my usual soap and toothbrush scrub. (You can also get steel wire brushes. DO NOT.) Overall I’m giving mine 7/10, with demerits for a few softer fine details, the hard-to-remove little bits left after scraping mold lines, and the higher difficulty of correcting bend deformations compared to other materials. In terms of cleanliness of casting, it’s honestly like 95% as good as most CB models unless you luck out and get a set of metals from very early in the life of a given mold since those are always suuuuper clean. I’ve had some gnarly metal miscasts and significant flash or mold slip, so I can’t really give weight to opinions that CB metals are always 100% flawless and any flawed castings are proof that Siocast is a dead end. That being said, I’d also strongly advise making use of the miscast service CB offers, they’re fantastic and even took the time to respond—at length—to a concern I had recently emailed them about. 10/10 on that score for sure.
I bought brass brushes after a guy in Melbourne who does awesome infinity paint jobs explained how he used them for surface prep on pewter minis. Good to know that they don’t chew up siocast too much.
You can even get aluminium bristled brushes (they're even softer than the brass ones) - mine are the kind usually used for cleaning small contact points for electronics (like power terminals, because they oxidise faster) but as one of my other hobbies that meshes with miniatures is electronics, I've had those for years.
My ones look like little metal bristled toothbrushes (and they often come in a set - you can often get them in the local "dollar store" equivalent in the hardware section. )
So this year I was actually painting more plastic minis than metal minis and I slightly prefer handling the polyamide instead of the tin. Only one of the remotes' legs started to produce the flakes when filed, but just a few passes in the opposite direction got me rid of those. After priming no leg showed any differences on its surface. The PA models can be easily on par with the metal models, take Fiddler and her Jackbots as an example. And the remotes are well made pieces, they might look a bit bland but that's rather a taste issue than material limitations. My only negative critique is the placement of the mold separation line (you can see it on the righthand remote). I think, with the world's general progression in mind, switching the whole miniature range to polyamide (or any other plastic) will be inevitable on the long run due to energy costs, pricing of the source materials or whatever. That said I woul've liked to see the repackaged Szalamandra as a plastic TAG instead of a 60€ chunk of metal.
I dunno, man. Big metal brushes used to rip off carbonized fat from a metal bar don't really translate to tiny soft metal brushes being an important tool for certain professions. I was quite surprised when I first came across them in early adulthood even though having been put on grill cleaning duty on several occasions growing up. That they have good uses for surface prep is somewhat new to me, as well.
@Tristan228 Man, can I just say that I'm envious of your amazing growth. I remember seeing your models for the first time a couple of years ago. You've goon from good to even better!
So, looks like the new Fuzzbots are also made from Siocast. As I'll probably get them as proxies for other remotes, I hope that the process has improved enought in this few months since the first models. But I'm not in a hurry, so I gues I'll wait until more brave folks get and review the miniatures.
I think the siocast has gotten better given what others have said. I’d still like to get the bearpode to confirm this but fate had other plans. It is of course entirely up to you to wait or not. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of reviews available once it gets released! Out of interest, what do you intend on proxying them for? My friend is thinking of adding them for his combined as they’re quite insect like.
Probots, I never liked the old ones (unlike the Rebots, which I do like), and I neither like the new ones.
Ah, yes. The probots. They’re not my favourite bots either but that’s more to do with them breaking or coming off their bases when I pick them up. These would be a good proxy for them. I was going to modify one and use it as a panoceania baggage or evo repeater bot as I’m not too keen on the older one but I may wait and see in case I see a conversion done using other bots.
Follow-up, I picked up a set of zonds. The plastic was more firm and seemed less prone to shredded filaments coming off while cleaning it up. In terms of cleanup required, the undercut areas seem prone to needing a fair amount of cleanup. Mostly it wasn’t difficult, and the spots that were challenging to clean are the same spots you generally won’t be able to see anyway…and that are likely to have casting issues with metals too. I think the quality is close to on par with the metals, but the strengths and weaknesses are different and it’s taking me a bit to adjust to the difference. Unfortunately, my set came with legs that were sort of misaligned—apparently this isn’t that infrequent? One is pretty close to level so a little elevated terrain on the base will solve it. The other zond’s leg misalignment means that when three feet are on a flat surface, the fourth will require tactical junk to avoid looking weird. The stiffer material also means that when I tried to bend that leg a little bit, it snapped clean off. Repairing it was easy, but on the quadrupedal remotes it’s annoying to have this problem. I think it could be solved by making the legs four separate pieces that attach to sockets in the hip assembly, since you can’t really bend them to accommodate your preferred base. Another solution would be to reverse the mold vent and sprue positioning on the legs. If you look at siocast photos, there are cylindrical bars that comprise part of the sprue. If the sprue joined the feet together, the resulting D shape might help keep the feet aligned with each other. It could also mean you could use some of the sprue to make foot pegs, if the vent stems connected to the bottoms of the feet. Other than the thing with the foot alignment, I’m honestly pretty happy with how the siocast models are going. At some point we’re going to get siocast TAGs and I’ve gone from skeptical to feeling pretty good about that.
Picked up a beyond crimson stone box yesterday - and the vostok was a pleasant surprise after reading some of the hyperbole in this thread. A little bit of cleanup - nothing a fresh blade in my knife couldn't fix. I will have to be careful of the weapon muzzle - it is a thin piece with an even thinner area that would be prone to fail (just as a metal or resin piece of that diameter would also be). Remote body was in 2 pieces (separate 'head' piece). The legs fit together reasonably well and it glued to the base pretty solidly. The only part that I altered was the stick magazine for the weapon. I don't like stick magazines on mounted weapons - so I swapped it out for a small flexible ammo feed belt. It's just sitting on its legs at this point, and there are still some minor mould seam line cleanups to do.
