A selection of 32mm fantasy wargaming miniatures in metal and plastic.
Hi Backers, As you know we have a new Kickstarter scheduled for September. I thought you might like a glimpse of our new Hoplite Girls. These are almost finished, there are just a few minor changes I want to make. Next up the command Elephant and hopefully seven new Gunpowder girls. Sculptor on these is Matt Gubser
Hi Backers,
First a bit of old business. If you live in the US and you haven't got your reward yet definitely contact us. If you have gotten your reward and something was wrong with it please contact us. If you have contacted us we are working on it.
As I mentioned before we are working feverously on Kickstarter 3 scheduled for September. It will feature a new command elephant a Djinn and several units. The units are the thing I particularly want to talk about Kickstarter 2 saw the release of our first full unit, the Desert Girls. Do you like this format? Do you have a use for full units of female warriors? If so how many individual figures do you want. The desert Girls have seven, is this the right amount? Would you like more than four rank and file members?
My second question is what units would you like to see? My tentative list is. For the desert army. Archers, Tribal Girls, Hoplite Infantry (spear and shield), Royal Guard, and assassins. My dream is to also have at least two units of cavalry per army but this is a ways off. For the Northern Army I would like to expand the Halberds, and Muskets into full units, a sword and shield unit, a Cossack infantry unit, and a greatsword unit. Again artillery and cavalry down the road. What do you think of this, thoughts, suggestions, etc.
Going forward their will be a rulebook that hopefully will include rules for mass battle, skirmish, ship combat, and a campaign. All set in my shattered sixteenth century world where a series of plagues starting in late antiquity have decimated the male population, radically altered the course of history, and left the earth vulnerable to incursions from other plains.
The next two units on my planning board are female hoplites and musketeers. I haven't decided which will be next. In the mean time let me showoff my painted Desert Girls again, the new renders for the Tribal Girls, and a sneak peek at the future.
Good morning backers, I got the word from Effincool last night that all packages are out the door. Please give it a few weeks before writing about missing orders as the mail is slow these days, especially international mail. Don’t worry, there is no expiration date on this. If you fall into a ten year coma tomorrow or get stranded on a desert island for decades I will make it right when you message me.
John asked me to show you the fruits of Effincool’s final labor, so here you go.
Thank you for coming on this journey with us. I apologize that it took about six months longer than anticipated, still we cut our over time in half from the 1st Kickstarter, so Kickstarter 3 should only be three months late.
Speaking of which, we are shooting for this September for our next Kickstarter. It’s going to be huge. We should have a female Djinn and another war elephant for the general to ride into battle as well as several units, Tribal Girls, Steppe Girls, a few more Gunpowder girls, Desert Archers, Hoplite Girls, and Amazonian Royal Guard. We are also beginning to kick around a rules set though that will probably not make it into this Kickstarter. In the mean time enjoy the first two Tribal Girls, these will be light auxiliaries for the Desert Girls.
Raymond
Hi Backers,
As many of you have pointed out, we had hoped to have all miniatures out the door by now, and in fact they are rapidly flying out the door at the moment and should be all out by the end of next week. Obviously this is neither the first date we promised or even the date from my last update. I apologize, it is not what we had hoped for but in the next few weeks when all of you get your miniatures I hope that you will feel it has been worth it. Effincool has labored mightily on this project and just as in the first kickstarter they sere almost perfect delivering the all metal orders. They have taken longer than any of us anticipated on the plastic side of things, but not from lack of effort and drive on their part. John at Effincool very graciously offered to write an update explaining the process they have been through with plastic production on this kickstarter and so I am going to turn the explanation over to John and let him fill you in.
Thank you for your patience,
Raymond
Hello Backers-
John from Effincool Miniatures here!
First of all, we want to thank you all for being patient with us
regarding the shipping of plastic product to you.
Next I want to apologize for that lateness and take a bit of time to
explain why things are late and what we are doing to correct those
problems. This is going to be a long post, so if you do not want to read
it all, let me just say right now that your minis are shipping as fast
as we can produce them and you will have them in your hands shortly!
I also want to apologize for the lack of updating. It is a lot tougher
to do updates for this project because I cannot directly post to the
project. I have to write things out and send them to Raymond, which to
be honest I just don’t do because the only thing I could have done was
complain about all of the things I am about to explain to you.
I know sometimes saying something at all is better than nothing, but if
you take the time to read all of this, I think you will understand my
frustration. There have been times where I have thought I have had a
problem worked out and we could start shipping, only to find out that
the problem was not solved so I thank you for your understanding on all
of this.
WHY ARE YOUR MINIS LATE?
When Raymond ran this project 1 year ago, SiOCast was fairly new
technology and we did not even have the machine yet. We were one of the
first US companies to order a machine. (We actually have the 5th machine
that got imported to the US) What this means is that due to the novel
nature of it, there were/are a lot of bugs that were really not worked
out on the part of SiOCast as well as on our end.
We received the machine in July and spent a few weeks waiting for an
electrician to come and wire up commercial power for the machine. This
machine was not able to be run by us straight away and every owner must
go through a 1 week intense training ($2,000) on the operation of the
machine which we could not schedule until we had the machine able to be
powered up. Our training took place at the end of August.
Our factory location was purchased at the beginning of September and we
were informed that the new owner had no intention of renewing our lease
which ended in Ocotber of 2021. After 9 years at that location we were
essentially put into a scramble to find a new location. Luckily I found
a spot that was a former laundry and looked like it would fit our needs
with a turn of a key (and moving 9 years of accumulated equipment).
I was wrong.
We got the keys in September and went to work straight away re-fitting
the property for our needs. This included getting all of the electrical
connections scheduled with a commercial electrician and getting permits
to alter the existing wiring. Needless to say that all of that work put
us into very late October before we were able to produce miniatures.
We started molding up the Cold Steel part of this Kickstarter at this
point, only to realize that we had gotten a bad batch of rubber and that
there was a noticeable “rim flash” at the mold parting on every single
miniature that we produced as masters. The rubber that we got was
apparently old and had a cured “skin” on the surface that did not allow
it to conform to the models properly.
After talking with Raymond, we went back to the start on them and ordered
in new rubber from a different supplier, who had a hard time getting raw
materials, so we were forced to wait once again.
Near the end of December we got the new rubber, so we start molding the
Cold Steel Girls again. This time they look flawless. The metal
production begins and we are able to crank those out and start shipping
metal product by mid Jan.
At the same time, we are also starting to produce the molds for the
SiOcast/plastic part of the project.
THE MOLD FRAME
Miniature molds are made in something called a mold frame. Essentially
you put silicone rubber in it and then put your parts in with a layer of
release agent, and then cover with another piece of silicone rubber.
This whole mold is then placed in a piece of equipment called a
vulcanizer where it is compressed and heated to 350F. Once it is cooled
down you can open the mold frame and take out the mold. Because there is
a release agent, you are left with 2 halves of a mold which has to then
be cut up to allow the material to flow into the cavities that are
created.
When we ordered the $70,000 machine, one of the things that was part of
the package was a $2,000 mold frame, as well as a $2,000 training
package (this is kind of important further down) which we already spoke
about. That mold frame is huge and made of a ton of metal. Once it is
heated up it takes at least an hour to cool down. You cannot make the
next mold until the frame is cooled down. This meant that making molds
for the SiOCast was taking 3 hours per each mold!! For a point of
reference, there are 33 molds for the plastic side of the production on
this project. If you do the math on that, that means almost 100 hours of
just pressing molds, not including the time it takes to cut them up and
prep them for actual use. To help alleviate that I ordered a second mold
frame in February, only to be told that they were out of stock. So we
soldiered on
THE MACHINE
I started running plastic through the machine and noticed that I was
getting a bunch of inconsistent problems where the mold would work ok
one time and then the next run was a disaster. So I start trying to
analyze what the problem might be. I took off the cover and notice that
there is an air fitting that seems to be leaking, but not all the time.
After consulting with the engineers at SiOCast, I remove the compression
fitting only to discover that it was installed incorrectly and the
ferrule that compresses the line was crooked, which cracked the housing.
So I wait for them to send me a new fitting.
I install the fitting and also explain to the engineer that I am getting
this weird problem in between runs of molds. The machine continues to
leak plastic out of the nozzle after the injection cycle, which they
assure me is because I need a new injector module ($450) for a machine
that has not even produced 100 miniatures. I order the injector and keep
struggling through, because….well it was making miniatures and it was
very cool and I was excited!
At the beginning of March, we are still making molds and casting minis,
but just not having a great yield out of the machine. For every mold
there are 12 pieces generally and I was getting 2-3 good pieces and the
rest either had short filling or extreme flashing on them. At this
point I am just sure that I will have to keep going at this slow pace
because I have to get these miniatures to you guys, but I assure you, it
was excruciating working at that pace.
I came into the shop in the first week of March and turned on the
machine to let the plastic warm up, which is a process that takes 1
hour. After an hour I went to the machine and noticed that it was not up
to temperature! After checking the diagnostics on the machine I
determined that one ot the 2 heating elements in the aluminum injection
block was burned out and not generating heat. I contacted SiOCast at
which point they inform me that the entire aluminum block is an older
design and the new one has 4 heating elements and the old design burned
out elements on the US machines because they were not rated high enough
for US commercial power (Its more technical than that, but I am summing
it up)
So I wait again for them to send me a new set of parts. Those parts
arrived while I was at Gary Con this year. I arrived back to the shop on
the Monday after Gary Con on March 27th and started the repair. It only
took a day but I was back up and running!
Surely this would fix everything….nope!
I ran with the same slow pace just assuming at this point that I just
did not know how to make molds for this machine and feeling generally
like a failure…because everyone else that now has a SiOCast is getting
great results and I still have a machine that keeps spitting out plastic
in between molds and burning my fingers as I try to clear the plastic.
On April 7th I contacted the person who did our operation training for
the machine, who is not an employee of SiOCast, but rather a metal
caster in the Netherlands who does the trainings for the company. I
explain to him what is going on with the leaking plastic and the
horrible production yield and lack of consistency in my casting.
We have a Skype meeting where he asks me to perform a test. I do what he
tells me to do and pass the results back to him. At which point he
informs me that there is a known issue with the early machines, in
addition to the heater block/heater element design flaw. From the
factory two of the lines are reversed and this problem should have been
caught as part of the $2,000 engineering training that we paid for. I
swap those lines around and do the test again.
Holy SHIT!! This machine works amazing when those lines are correctly
connected.
If you have taken the time to read all of this, thank you very much for
sticking with me here. I assure you there is a happy ending coming.
While I was at Gary Con, Siocast announced the addition of newer
material. A hard plastic that they have been testing out with Reaper for
the last 6 months, which has used in all of the BONES USA line that they
have produced in that time.
WHERE WE ARE AT RIGHT NOW!
There are several parts that are part of this project that I have not
been happy with the flexibility of the material on very thin parts.
Unfortunately we cannot go back and re-do everything in this harder
plastic, but we do have the ability to try to fix some of the most
difficult pieces. Having said that if your order has any of the
following pieces in it, we will be testing a sample of the new hard
plastic this weekend to see if it makes them better and we will not be
able to ship your orders until we have the answer after this weekend.
1-Nameless 13 Champion
2. Coven Shrine of the Nameless 13
3. Elephant handler
4. Nameless 13 Duelist
If you do not have these pieces in plastic, your order is either being
processed by Ed for shipping, or is already on its way to you!!
If you have these pieces we will have an answer on this newer hard
plastic over this weekend and you should be shipping sometime next week.
Thanks again for all of your understanding on this learning curve
John
Effincool Miniatures
Hi Backers,
I apologize for the overdue response. As I mentioned in the responses to the last update I have family in Ukraine and the events of the moment have had me rather preoccupied. Thanks to those of you who responded and wished my family well. They are all fine at the moment, fingers crossed. We have also had an issue with the plastic caster and Effincool had to order a part from Spain, but that is now resolved and Effincool thinks they will have all orders filled and out the door in two weeks. So hopefully all rewards will be in the hands of backers by April 15th.
My wife and I had planned to spend a couple of months in Kyiv this summer, but unfortunately Putin's goon squad and Delta Airlines fear of doing corkscrew landings in contested airspace has put an end to our plans. However, our loss is Dark Maenads gain and we are planning a small kickstarter for early summer. This kickstarter is going to focus on the second elephant. A command elephant to carry the general and her staff into battle. I don't have any pictures to show you yet, but I am planning a larger howdah/tower holding the General, her standard bearer, signaler, two archers of the guard, and a hopefully rather impressive driver. Oh, plus a cheetah and a python don't you know. ;)
I am not sure how many stretch goals I can get into this on short notice, but what would you really like to see included. More Gun Powder Girls? Cold Steel Girls? Let me know what you want to see and I'll consider it. Some things I have on the back burner are a Gunpowder Girl with a grenade launcher, a figure representing the overall commander to the Gunpowder Girls. Some native tribeswomen to serve as auxiliaries for the Cold Steel girls, as well as a Guards unit for that group (think female Greek Hoplites), I would also like to start doing cavalry. In any case tell me what you want to see.