blind horizon > I think he does mock ups in plastic but then casts in lead? correct me if Im wrong. What I want to know is about casting directly in plastic.
Okay a little info on how i believe onslaught does their casting, They print in frosted ultra detail it looks like. Then has a bronze created, which is a very durable bronze(metal) master. This is then sent to a company to make the single bronze into a bunch of masters to be placed into a production mould. The production mould can hold large and small pieces, and probably holds around 50-80 pieces when talking 6m infantry. To cast directly into plastic, i believe you have to get a mould plate made and have an injection mould machine. The mould plate can cost anywhere from $2.5k to 5.5k. This is a job you would send the plate to a company, the company usually can fabricate it for you or works with someone that does fabrication for them. This step is for big production. Resin home casting is below this type of casting, it's can be amywhere from a small hobby to a medium sized business. Resin is inexpensive once up and running and doesn't take a whole lot of space to setup. Some people add another pressure pot to their setup so they can move faster(I am on my way to getting my second pot and a larger compressor, this will not make me twice as fast but i should have very little down time, capping my 1 man efficiency).
I learned everything i know about resin casting here. Most of these people are spread all around the world so i never had any direct in person help. I also am not very technological literate, i had to read and get a basic understanding of what they where talking about. This is a very friendly community, if you wanted to try your hand at casting in resin again this is the place to become a member.
http://www.resinaddict.com/forum/index.php *If a design is sent in to a 3-d printer company, do I retain the rights over it, and do i have to pay $75 each time for a print run? How does that work?
-You retain full ownership of your IP (intellectual property).
-Every print is priced based on it's size, this account for how much room on the plate it takes up, how much material and how much time it sits in the machine. These machines are kept running as much as they can so their space and use is at a premium.
-You can have an effective store on shapeways where you get to markup above what it costs to print for profit in your pocket. If you mark up to high you might not see a lot of sales if any. You can also group items together to bring the price per piece down for an overall larger sale for shapeways if that makes sense. What i mean is instead of 1 tank for $3 you could possibly to 5 tanks for $12, overall each tank is cheaper but they get more money in sales.