I've tried Plaster of Paris moulding.

Although the raw material is cheap, it's so bloody messy, I'd stick to resin.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

If you're looking to mass produce yourself I agree. But for the home user plaster of paris is going to be much easier. And if you plan to base your buildings probably not too fragile either.

But as ever ymmv.

I can see your point there, but I'd definitely go for resin if you're wanting a casting process that's clean, and resultant models that are rigid enough to withstand the rigours of tabletop gaming (These are thin walls, after all).

Even resin isn't going to be as strong as the plastic ruins GW used to make, but it will survive being dropped on the floor etc mostly intact, rather than shattering into little chunks..

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

There are some molding plaster (well, mineral resins), mostly some used for dental stuff, that set quite fast and very hard. Harder than plastic even. NSZG on the german forum is using these, and I think they might be the best stuff for buildings. I will try to dig some more info about that

I know that when it come to building, I'd be much more inclined to get or make some molds and cast the stuff myself. I fear the cost of other solution would be prohibitive and wouldn't allow as much modularity.

Update?

Well, here's the conundrum I find myself in:

I have no idea how to make enough of these things to satisfy my own demand, much less what anyone else might want. If I had them spuncast in pewter, they'de be expensive and prone to warping. Resin would be great but it's so slow and I can never get the consistency right. Plaster would work well enough if these were solid buildings, but they're not - they are flat plate facades. Plaster doesn't lend itself to that kind of thing, does it?

If anyone knows of a method that I can use to produce a bunch of parts in a rapid fashion I'd like to hear about it.

Anyway, I have recently started resizing some parts. They no longer match the epic:40,000 gray ruins exactly, but I've kept the style is the same. I adjusted some dimensions to achieve easier modularity, and so that I can make some double-sided facades of the non-ruined versions.

Double-sided facades essentially double the available building styles without adding to the number of parts needed to be made. The down side is that they only work for non-ruined buildings. That's not that big of a deal though, if you consider that there were going to have to be separate ruined and nonruined parts anyway.

In the end, when I have the first batch fully drawn, I will update this thread. Then, if anyone is interested, I am considering emailing people the .stl files and they can do with them as they desire.

I use a mixture of plaster and high-density casting powder for my HirstArts molds, and the resulting casts seem pretty strong. However, that's not any faster than resin.

I used Merlin's Magic (a harder plaster) for ruins, and they came out ok. They are more fragile than resin, so you have to be careful not to torque them or *awwwww, snap!* I'm using resin right now, but it's pretty much extra mix left over from other projects.

I like your idea for double-sided plates. While limiting the ruin category, it is a good idea for more variety. Pics when you got them, please!

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Adeptus Monk-anicus
Direct Fire! My Epic Blog
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can I buy some of the bronzed ones off you? then I can just make as many as i need (bajillions) . have $$$ will paypal.

Bumping a bit. What happened? Sorry if I missed something obvious, but this seems too good a project to let go.

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Nitpicks Knapsack (Scratchbuilding and 3D designing and printing and painting)

Work gets in the way, as always.

I'm thinking I might just make these available through a shapeways store (that doesn't exist yet). There already are several 6mm buildings available there (from others), but mine will be better, IMHO. That probably means I'll have to ditch the eagles icons.

Right now, though, I'm trying to get my space elf objectives cleaned up enough to be spun cast. Frosted ultra detail of the bunkers have been ordered, working on the silos and towers now.

Back on the topic of the building facades - people could let me know how tall the buildings ought to be. right now each floor is a bit less than 3/4" tall, so a 4-story building is about 3" (75mm) tall. I wanted some taller buildings for myself, and the way shapeways works, it will be cheaper to have full height parts rather than relying entirely on modular sections that are 2 or 3 stories tall.

So, what is the tallest building you would want?

Would that mean that you will print, say, only 5 stories facades? Still nice, but not as versatile as perhaps a 3 level variant. What is the difference money-wise?

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Nitpicks Knapsack (Scratchbuilding and 3D designing and printing and painting)

What I mean is that there would be 3, 4, 5, 6, + story variants in addition to the modular (base floors, mid floors, roofline) sections.

Shapeways is print-to-order, direct to the end user, and printing a 3 piece set (bottom floors + mid floors + roofline) is more expensive than printing a single bottom-to-top facade of the same height. And because it is print-to-order, there is no capital investment on my part so making multiple versions of a part only costs me the time it takes to draw them up. That time is negligible for repeating pattern parts like these.

I just wanted to know how how many stories I should stop at. I'm thinking 6 or 8.

For me that would be a price issue. I would consider making my own moulds to manage a big building project. So it is hard to tell without knowing roughly what prices we are talking about.

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Nitpicks Knapsack (Scratchbuilding and 3D designing and printing and painting)