Toy mould cost and wear, etc

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Denyer
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Toy mould cost and wear, etc

Post by Denyer »

https://tformers.com/mystery-of-convoy- ... lDw-ejzg7I

https://medium.com/jaycon-systems/why-i ... a69b6fccb5

Sure, they're expensive. Sure, there's not a compelling case to create new ones when reissues have been done to death and everyone who wants them has a load, and Prime's trailer doesn't add a huge amount of value at this stage. Transformers also have a lot of separate parts relative to many other products.

Versus this, tooling is created for a massive array of plastic goods that are sold cheaply. I'm not particularly convinced that by now in terms of tech that designs are destined to be lost for good (scanning and modelling have improved a phenomenal amount) or that 40-year old moulds are only instances... we're pretty sure that KO producers have some original era moulds from warehouse finds, and that they aren't necessarily the only copies of those moulds. We're pretty sure that MP KO producers aren't or aren't just using stolen moulds due to differences* in what's produced The retail price of huge new mould items such the Wei Jiang MP01 size evasion mode Prime indicates that tooling can be relatively affordable.

*eg, https://www.tfw2005.com/boards/threads/ ... t-10145689

I just find it a bit weird that steel moulds are regarded almost as holy items.
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Warcry
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Re: Toy mould cost and wear, etc

Post by Warcry »

I do wonder how much the process has changed since the 1980s. Back then, I'd imagine there were a lot more steps in the process...manually sculpting parts, then using those to make master molds, then using your master molds to make the production molds. Nowadays I'd assume everything is done in CAD software, and that 3D printing technology really speeds up the whole process of getting a usable production mold. So with any luck, modern stuff will never be lost the way vintage molds are.

And we do know that they can 3D-scan objects to make new molds. Isn't that where the mold for the Soundwave reissues is supposed to have come from? I suppose it's just a case of whether the expense can be justified, and some tall forehead decided that Prime's trailer wasn't worth it.

If I remember right, a lot of modern-day KOs stem from digital piracy -- someone gets ahold of the CAD files and makes their own molds from that. Which could also explain some of the differences we see, since tweaks and fixes made to the final production molds may not be reflected in the source.
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Clay
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Re: Toy mould cost and wear, etc

Post by Clay »

I've always found the excuse of "steel molds are irreplaceable/cannot be recast" to be highly suspect. I mean, they make fifty or something new transformer molds a year, so it can't be that much of a hassle. For the stuff that's lost or misplaced, they can always scan each part from existing product and then clean it up manually in CAD. The real reason, I think, is that it's just more trouble than it's worth in terms of both cost and effort to repair/resurrect old stuff when they could just as easily be working on something new.

G1 Prime should totally come with the trailer, though.
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