The Move! Progress and pics...

[Blaker]

Looks great Leon, yall needed the expansion.

So Dave did the first castings at the new digs and with Mordor just a few feet away was Dave casting the first run of the Aztec Tank with Tarletons 

[Leon]

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

Yep, that's it.  It might look a bit more impressive when I paint them, but they're all homemade by Dave.

How much bigger is the space you've got now Leon ? Twice, three times, four times the size ? More ?

It's about 5x the size of the old garage, but has to incorporate a lot of the stuff that was in the house as well.  So it's more like garage + utility room + bedroom + bit of loft + bit of dining room when you add it all up.  Maybe 2 or 3 times bigger than the combined old space?

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?

Yep, these are in two halves, and contain a variety.  If it's a regular size pack (30 foot/15 cav/3 guns) then one mould will usually contain 1 full pack.  We can get a few spares in, so a mould may have 32-40 foot figures in it, which allows a few spares in case of miscasts.  Something like the WW2 foot which come in packs of 10's will generally be 3 codes to a mould.  Vehicles vary, you could have 6 tanks with turrets, or 10 smaller vehicles.  They may be a mixture of different codes, or maybe a half and half mix of two codes.  It does vary a lot.  There are even some moulds where the turret is in one mould, and the hull in another, depending on if they've been remodelled, or came to us at different times, etc...

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?

The machines are the spin-casters, all handmade by Dave.  They each run off an electric motor.  The mould is placed horizontally inside, and held in place by a metal plate.  As the machine spins, metal arms clamp the mould down, and then liquid metal is poured through a hole in the top, into the top of the mould.  The centrifugal force flings the metal out through the sprue, and into the figures within the mould.  It doesn't need to spin long for our figures, but the larger the figure, the longer you need to spin for (if you don't spin long enough, the metal will shrink back as it cools, leaving miscasts).

The mould needs to be left long enough for the metal to cool, so we work on a stack of several at once.  Dave does 3 cos he's got asbestos hands, while I prefer 6.  The hot one goes on the bottom of the pile, and has cooled by the time it reaches the top.  The sprue is melted down once the figures have been clipped off.

That's a brief summary of it, there are some more technical bits involved, and it can be quite a science at times, learning how to get it right, and why something might be miscasting for instance. 

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?

50-60 cycles sounds rather optimistic to me!  That would be one a minute, which I think isn't possible to be honest.  Just clipping the figures off takes at least 1 minute, to allow you to check them as you go.  We aim to average 20 spins per hour roughly.  It can be more if you're doing easy stuff, longer if you've got fiddly bits.  It may be possible to do more spins with 28mm's for example, as you're only clipping 16 figures per spin, as opposed to 30-odd 10mm's, and you can quite often just bend the 28's off with your fingers.  But then 28's require a longer spin time, so you'd lose time there.


Best thing to do is come along sometime and pay us a visit!  You can see the machines in action, and have a go at casting yourself!

[Leman]

Looking very professional.

[Leon]

Yesterday and today have been spent mainly painting, and finishing off some little odds and ends with the benches.  We've also managed to bag a couple of sofa's from eBay for the bargain price of 99p!    So we had a little trip out in the van to pick those up as well.  I meant to grab a pic of them, but we've taken the covers off to give them a wash first, so I'll have to get a photo when they're back on.

So, work stations complete, each with their own shelf to keep everything neat and tidy:




Dave has knocked up some metal trays which we can either fix to certain benches, or they can be used as portable worktops, so we've got those painted up now:




And we've picked up a cheap fridge, which will soon be joined by a freezer, a microwave and our £5 kettle to finish off the 'catering department'...  




Sunday we'll be popping another coat of paint on a couple of the benches, and also getting the office sorted out.  Might even get chance for an Easter egg or two hopefully... 

There's only a couple of things we still need to get hold of, so I'm currently scouring eBay for a decent coffee table, a filing cabinet and another swivelly office chair!

[nikharwood]

Nice to see that everything's progressing in the corporate colours 

[Annatar]

Great job

[Bishop Lord]

Looking great, looks like you'll have another trophy to adorne the new place as well

Jason.

[Leon]

Looking great, looks like you'll have another trophy to adorne the new place as well

Jason.

[Yorky]

get the kettle on, I'll bring my Mug.

[jdeleonardis]

Congrats guys!  It looks really great in there!

[Leon]

And here is my first official post in my new official office!  We're working from the wireless Mi-Fi signal at the moment, until BT turn up and sort out the phone lines.

[Ben Waterhouse]

The Eagle has landed!

[gregernest]

Looks good, guys! 

Here's to wondering if my lastest order will have been cast there or is already in the post to the States. 

[Leon]

Here's to wondering if my lastest order will have been cast there or is already in the post to the States. 

If it was the one placed through Warstore, Dave got all the WW2 stuff done yesterday, and we'll be finishing off the rest Tues/Wed hopefully!

[gregernest]

That would be the one! 

Here's to hoping for no miscasts!!!  Take your time have an extra tea. 

[Leon]

That would be the one! 

Here's to hoping for no miscasts!!!  Take your time have an extra tea. 

Very rare to get any miscasts, Dave's pretty astute in that regard!  With US packages, it's usually the odd bent barrel here and there, but the package will be coming via Fedex in a box probably, so shouldn't be as bashed around as normal!   

[tschuma]

The move looks great.  I am curious about the casting and fumes.  Do you need ventilation equipment?

As far as the Warstore goes, Neal at the Warstoree and Pendraken have a great relationship as I have ordered from the Warstore many times, with no issues!

Tom

[Leon]

The move looks great.  I am curious about the casting and fumes.  Do you need ventilation equipment?

We tend to keep things fairly well ventilated, but the new place has front and rear doors, plus a large up and over style roller door, so that should keep it nice and airy.  There's also a flue which goes up through the roof, so we can always pipe into that if we need to.

[Leon]

A few more bits and pieces achieved today, so we're just about ready for the first full day of casting on Tuesday!

First off we've now got the workstations all ready to go, with spares trays, spare gripseals, etc.




The packaging area is all stocked and ready to go, which is a good job, cos there's a pile of orders ready to be taken to the post office tomorrow!




And the covers are now back on our 99p settee's!




Finally, my our office is starting to take shape, we're just missing a phone line and a second computer!




For anyone who is waiting on an order, thanks for your patience while we've gone through this move.  From Tuesday onwards, we'll be back to the machines as normal, so we should be able to get caught up pretty quickly.

[Theo]

Very happy for you lads Leon! Well done to all involved. I hope you flourish in your new digs!