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Hi Isaac,
I appreciate you taking the time to respond to my question!
In lugnet.off-topic.clone-brands, Isaac Yue wrote:
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Hi Darrell,
I suppose you already know that the cost of a metallic mould can vary
depending on the complexity of the shape of the objects, but at the very
least it’ll still put you back by a few thousands US$, right? Well, anyway, I
won’t tell you how much I spent on producing my last batch of weapons (not
that it’s a business secret or anything, it’s just that I don’t want to
receive a bunch of emails afterwards saying ‘you overpaid’; or that ‘I can
help you for half that amount scam!’; etc.
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Well, at the risk of being “one of those people”, I’ll start by saying there are
lots of injection molding houses that will bid on work online (assuming you had
CAD files of your beards). These bids would at least give you a ballpark figure
to know if you were being “scammed”. Since you’ve produced parts before and are
happy with the results, I can’t argue with whatever method you used!
I really understand what you’re saying about quality.. I guess I’m withdrawing
my earlier suggestion you make your stuff using RP.. Right now the stuff coming
out of RP machines can’t match stuff coming out of injection molds (well, at
least not without a lot of finishing work, which defeats the purpose). RP by
definition wasn’t designed to make finished parts; the objects were supposed to
be prototypes of finished parts. It’s just so tempting to use the technology
for LEGO since both use ABS as a medium.
The benefit of RP technology is its relationship to CAD. So if you’re already
using CAD, it’s great. If you don’t know how to use CAD, it’s probably less
great. But there can be interesting hybrids of hand/computer work. Let me use as
an example Hester Studios (this is the company that did the character design for
Shrek... Shrek III coming soon!). They do “traditional” sculpture maquettes for
character development in clay. These are scanned into the computer and
manipulated with 3D software - they can check expressions, movement, etc. They
can also do things like make perfect left/right mirror objects in the computer
(this is something very difficult and time-consuming to do in clay). Finally,
using RP, many different iterations of the same basic idea could be prototyped
“rapidly”, shown to directors, physically modified and rescanned, etc. After
they finish testing they hand the digital models over to the animators (who then
add their own tweaks..).
BTW, did you know there is also an RP machine that makes clay models? It’s used
for automotive mock ups..
To bring this back to your beards (sorry for the hijack!), using CAD and RP you
could make hundreds of different prototypes and check them out on a real
minifig. You could then take the same digital data and email it to your
moldmaker in Singapore.. :)
In other words, the same thing you’re already doing (probably quicker and
cheaper) by hand! LOL
Darrell
ps I’ll probably email you for the super secret info..
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Help needed: my custom beards
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| (...) Hi Darrell, I suppose you already know that the cost of a metallic mould can vary depending on the complexity of the shape of the objects, but at the very least it'll still put you back by a few thousands US$, right? Well, anyway, I won't tell (...) (20 years ago, 19-Sep-04, to lugnet.off-topic.clone-brands, lugnet.parts.custom, lugnet.build.minifigs, FTX)
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