Casting

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Casting is the process by which a model is made. It is commonly done in polyurethanes, pewter, or resins. In the olden days of wargaming, models were often cast in mostly lead-metal mixes. That doesn't happen anymore because lead gives you cancer. Poor casting or old molds are what gives you kit, the wiry bits of metal sticking out of metal models and those paper-thin plastic vanes on plastic models. Casting will inevitably give you mold lines, however better casting will make them less noticeable. Bad mold lines give you models which look like half their body shifted about a foot to the side without the express consent of the other half.

Zee Process

Casting happens nearly 100% of the time in this manner:

• Someone has an idea for a model, and so he sculpts it in a resin. This is called the "parent model".

• Next, he waits for the model to harden. Once it has, he places the model in a box and fills the box with a different, molten material.

• Once that hardens into a block of hard stuff around the precious "parent," he carefully cracks the block along the flanks of the model, creating a two-halved imprint of the model. This is the mold.

• From there, he drills holes in the mold so that the actual models can have their materials injected directly into the mold as it is being held together.

• Then, the injection may commence, and models will soon be in abundance.

Mold Wear and Tear

Due to the nature of the molds, they often cannot be used forever. They were forged at a temperature not much higher than the models themselves will be forged in, and so if a delicate balance is not maintained, the mold will warp, crack, or generally lose detail. Even when all possible care is taken, molds just don't last forever (though nobody has yet told Airfix this). Model makers use several tactics for working around this:

The first is recasting the mold. More often than not, the "parent model" will be put in reverent storage, and won't be melted away like in Bronze Casting, which is similar but different. This keepsake "parent" can be used to make more molds as needed. Sometimes, however, the parent is considered too precious, so a first-generation "daughter" model will be cast in the toughest stuff the model makers could possibly use (sometimes at the expense of the original mold) in order to make a very durable model which can be used to cast molds over and over without warping.

The second tactic is making a stronger mold. Sometimes the mold will get a mold made of it, and then that mold will be used to cast stronger molds which the models can be forged in without warping the mold.

Games Workshop and You

Games Workshop is a wargame company known for making egregiously overpriced models. But if you didn't know that, you shouldn't be on this wiki. They often excuse their prices by saying that their models are of exceptional quality, and thus their molds are more expensive/break more often/need maintenance, despite that by industry standards (and as every single fucking 40K fan knows), Citadel miniatures have chunky details, low part counts and price basic plastic models in the same range as top-of-the-line multimedia kits made for accuracy fiends who masturbate with digital calipers. And that's not even considering the fucking bubbles.

Fa/tg/uys who are enraged by Games Workshop's shitty marketing ploys can turn to home casting to get their model fix, at next to zero cost.

Casting can be expensive or cheap, depending on how you do it.- a comprehensive fa/tg/uy-written guide is availiable to help you through the process.

3D Printing

This is GW's nightmare come true.

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Gallery of DIY

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  A concise, comprehend-able casting process description

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