The Move! Progress and pics...

[nikharwood]

Looks great mate - if only I could pop in now & again 

[Leon]

Looks great mate - if only I could pop in now & again 

It's only 642 miles?   

[mollinary]

Curiously only one mile less than the distance between Mons, Belgium, and Jicin, Czech Republic!   Allegedly.

Mollinary

[nikharwood]

It's only 642 miles?   

Put the kettle on then - see you in a bit 

Curiously only one mile less than the distance between Mons, Belgium, and Jicin, Czech Republic!   Allegedly.

Mollinary

It's also pretty-much the distance from my house to Bordeaux...

[Leon]

Today was the heavy lifting day, as we got all the moulds, racks and machines into the van and down to the unit.  We managed to fit all the moulds in the first trip, although the van's suspension wasn't looking too clever!




The second trip we brought the racks, the machines and the old worktables:






After a rough tally up, we reckon there's about 1500 moulds altogether!




And finally I nipped back down and put a coat of Pendraken blue on a few of the worktops:







Tomorrow plan is to get the machines and racks into position, and get the moulds back onto them.  Plus more benches and a partition wall!

[nikharwood]

That's a lot of moulds mate!

Good progress though - really taking shape 

[peterdong]

Well done so far, but there's a lotta stuff I'd wanna have...

Will you guys have a lobby, or a display area/museum for painted minis?
Maybe a long hall with black and white pictures explaining Pendraken's history?
How 'bout a large 55 gallon saltwater fish tank, just for decoration.
What about like premade miniatures of the most popular figures so people can just walk in and buy?
You should probably organize the moulds so casting is easier (like in crates).
Advertising of some sort?
Red carpet?
A large chandelier?

And the list goes on...    

[Avalon]

Now thats starting to look more like a workshop, 

[FierceKitty]

Would "baited breath" (sic) be a result of a phermone-laden toothpaste, perhaps?

[Ben Waterhouse]

Would "baited breath" (sic) be a result of a phermone-laden toothpaste, perhaps?

Meh, I see your point...

[Womble67]

Hi there

The new place looks absolutely fantastic however I think you've got your hands full setting the new place up. 

Andy

[Leon]

Peter, I'm not sure how it is in the US, but industrial space in the UK can be very expensive, so we have to make the most of the space we've got here.  There is room to expand at a later date maybe, if we think it would be worth it.

Will you guys have a lobby, or a display area/museum for painted minis?

There will be a customer area, not really a retail style space though, more a 'pop in for a coffee and a chat' kind of place.

Maybe a long hall with black and white pictures explaining Pendraken's history?

Just not enough room for that kind of thing!

How 'bout a large 55 gallon saltwater fish tank, just for decoration.

No...  

What about like premade miniatures of the most popular figures so people can just walk in and buy?

Maybe as we go along we can look at this, but there's quite a few obstacles, such as having money/metal tied up in stock which might not sell soon, needing room for several hundred of the most popular codes, etc.  We can cast things for people to pick up though, we'd only need a bit of notice, maybe 24 hours?  And we can cast smaller orders as people wait if need be.

You should probably organize the moulds so casting is easier (like in crates).

The moulds are all organised better now, see the pics below!

Advertising of some sort?

We'll have the Pendraken signage outside, and I might look at putting some display pieces on one of the walls.

The new place looks absolutely fantastic however I think you've got your hands full setting the new place up.  

There's definitely a lot to do, but there's quite a few of us down there, so 90% of the setup will be done before Tuesday, and we can sort the last 10% after Salute.



So, today's update!

This morning we had our first visitor, as Forum member The Shootist popped along to give us a hand for a few hours.  The first job on the schedule was to get all the moulds back up onto the racks, in chronological order.  With two of us, this didn't take as long I was expecting, so we were done around lunch time.  So we've now got three separate work areas:

Workstation 1:



Workstation 2:



Workstation 3:



We then got the partition wall finished off, with the benches on both sides of it.  The far side will be for packaging the orders, and the side in view will be where we pile the orders as they are cast, and also where we put the show orders as they come in:



And today we had the first official casting in our new home!  Dave did the honours:



So, it's all coming together quite nicely:



Tomorrow we'll be getting the old tables cleared off, sorting any spare master moulds which don't have homes on the racking, and then starting to sort out the office.  The phone lines don't become active for another week as BT couldn't get an engineer to us any sooner, but we've invested in a Mi-Fi unit, which will do as a stop-gap.  I can also then take it away to the shows with us, so we're always online.

[nikharwood]

Looks top-notch - well done guys, and great to see Dave casting the first figures in the new home 

[Maenoferren]

looking rather good there 

[clibinarium]

Looks Great, but..

THAT'S a casting machine !? I had imagined something more impressive in my head; more like this kind of stuff;







...OK maybe not that big. Still I think the actual art of casting good figures is something akin to japanese sword smithery.

[Annatar]

You forgot to post a pic of Workstation 4 (behind the portcullis... first pic) ...  

Nice place by the way... 

Though the walls look a bit blank....

[Techno]

So....
How much bigger is the space you've got now Leon ? Twice, three times, four times the size ? More ?
You'll be wondering how you ever fitted everything in at the old 'place'.
Looks superb.
Congrats again !
Cheers - Phil.

[Steve J]

Glad to see that the move has gone smoothly and quickly by the look of things.

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Glad to see that the move has gone smoothly and quickly by the look of things.

Wait a week ---

ianS 

[fred.]

Its cool to see photos of the behind the scenes - I only had the vaguest idea of how the figures are produced - and now I know more, but have lots of questions too!

The black rubber disks are the moulds? Do these split in half? So that you can get the cast figures out, and the hole in the middle is where the liquid metal goes in?
Do you have a range of figures in a mould, or do you have a single pack's worth in a mould?

The black machines are the spin casters? The black disk goes in one of these and is spun around? Then liquid metal is added? Is this stage quite quick, i.e. 1 laddle of metal, let it spun for a short length of time, then what? Let it slow down and remove the mould (which I guess is hot from the metal?) how long do you have to wait for the mould to cool so that you can get the figures out? Do you have lots of sprue that is used to feed the metal in, is this melted down and re-used?

One of the manufacture sites talks of 50-60 cycles per hour - which sounds really fast to get the mould in an out and get the figures out. Or would this be using multiple moulds?

Sorry for so many questions, Leon - if you have time to answer them all it would be great.