I don't like this material, in my opinion it's worse than gw/battlefront hard plastics and worse than metal. But i'm not totally against it because I understand CB limitations as a company. Having said that i'm against keeping the metal prizes for plastic products. The price for those products was already very high, and now I see them unreasonable for soft plastics.
I don't think you'll have to worry on that front. Koni has stated a couple times in this thread that this is a new material of thermoplastic. So comparing it to previous manufacturers and products is kind of fruitless.
So these are made using soft, bendable, cheap feeling plastic, and will cost the same as if they were made from metal? Perfect...
Thank you for clarifying the exact polymer is polyamide. I have a PhD in Materials Engineering, and my specialty is thermoplastic polymers and composites, so for the benefit of the rest of the readers I can provide some general background on polyamide and why it works well for this application: Polyamide comes in a number of different types (PA6, PA6,6, PA12, etc). Each grade has slightly different properties, though they all have similar behavior in general. When injection molding, polyamide has a viscosity similar to water. This is much better than something like PVC or ABS as it allows the polyamide to fill fine details in the mold (as evidenced by the comparison between metal master and the injection molded part Koni provided) Depending on the polyamide grade, the melt temperature of the material is similar to that of ABS. Softening and bending parts is doable, though polyamide will be a bit stickier than an ABS model when hot. One thing to note is that polyamide is more hydrophilic (likes water) than ABS or PVC. This means that polyamide must be dried prior to molding, and the "dry as molded" part that comes out of the mold will be quite rigid (it helps that CB is apparently using polyurethane or silicone molds to demold), but as the part absorbs a small amount of water from the atmosphere it will soften a little and gain durability (to Bostrias comment that you can bend thin pieces and they will rebound to their original position. The other advantage of hydrophilic material is the way it takes paint. Acrylic paint should bond very well to the surface and for those who want to try something different - you can even dye it! You will still want to prime it first to seal the model and achieve a smooth surface finish. Regular "plastic cements" won't work on polyamides due to the chemical structure (as mentioned by other previously) but cyanoacrylate glue should work well. I am quite pleased by this announcement. The material selected should provide excellent performance, durability, and paintability. Using this for large models also dramatically reduces weight (and therefore cost) as volume increases dramatically as you scale up size. I also think plastic models such as this are much easier to cut and repose/swap.
Wait. May be the price would be lower. Who knows? I didn’t saw words about that in any way. I am skeptical but want to see the real result.
Polyamide is often used in metal replacement applications in automotive, so I think you will be surprised by the performance. Bendable does not mean soft - it just means its not brittle and won't snap (looking at you, Djanbazan sniper barrel that keeps falling off).
Wow, thank you so much to spend the time to write this down. So helpful to have technical stuff carefully expressed by an actual expert. I might use this text elsewhere. Thank you so much.
Ah, thank you. I missed that. Well... that’s bad, but other option with more expensive miniatures is worse.
Thank you so much for this info, i always figured CB would go the warmahordes route and make larger kits both metal and plastic. Cant wait to see how good the quality is of the shakush.
That sounds fantastic. I'm plagued by bent gun barrels. You can bend them back but it's never quite right. I do like the heft of metal, but I think I'd be happy to forego it in exchange for straight gun barrels.
Depends on the exact grade of polyamide they are using, I suspect nylon 6 since its the least expensive but nylon 12 is also pretty common in applications where durability is a concern. Either polyamide should be stiffer and stronger than GW's high impact polystyrene (HIPS), potentially as much as double in both categories. Nylon in general is also abrasion resistant, which is why Bostria recommends against filing. The amount of deformation before nylon yields and breaks is also higher that HIPS, so it should be more resistant to being dropped on the floor or knocked off a table (ie. less likely to permanently bend or snap something).
