Today Goobertown and Archon Studio take us through how hard plastic sprues for miniatures are made at the factory level.
Goobertown Hobbies is a great content creator who has interesting takes on the hobby. Whether it’s a collaboration with other hobby YouTubers or a challenge for himself, he has a broad range of topics he covers.
This week he is doing something a little different. Archon Studio actually agreed to show him the whole process of how the sprues are made! This is just a really cool look inside the industry we all love; check it out!
How Hard Plastic Miniatures Sprues Are Made at the Factory
Archon Studio is probably best known for its Dungeon & Lasers campaigns and its Rampart Terrain system, but they also produce minis for Conquest, The Army Painter, and much more. So a great place to get an in-person look!
They make their sprues out of high-impact polystyrene and are great for mass-producing detailed minis. Obviously, it’s quite expensive to do this setup, but the cost works out in the end as they can produce thousands from one set of molds.
The bits must be laid out in a CAD program before making them into sprues. It takes a CAD instrument about a week to carve out the molds, then a high-pressure machine will make sure the sprues will be injected properly. So, this all is more expensive up-front but way cheaper on the back end.
The Archon Studio Factory
They have a sweet setup with a ton of machines!
The plastic comes in little pellets, which are sucked up into the machine and eventually made into minis! They can add recycled sprues into this plastic, and then they also dye a bunch of it, as grey is easier for our eyes to see than white.
The material then goes into a drying station and gets melted, then it gets injected into the molds.
This machine injects the plastic into the molds (which takes less than a second). It basically makes tiny little explosions to blast the plastic into the mold and remove all the air. The longest step is the cooling period.
Then, it pops out a sprue!
When something is either miscast or unusable, they grind them down into little pellets so they can be reused throughout the process and get turned into perfectly working sprues. They can then be mixed back into a new mix.
They also work with clear plastic, which is usually much more brittle. However, to keep them from being so fragile, they use less coloration, which really helps.
Miniature Sprue Design
Archon Studio has three golden rules when it comes to sprue design. The first is the shortest way, the second degassing and quality, and the third is sprue balance. The shortest way deals with only using a single spot to inject the mold and the closest to everything (the big circle in the middle is the only spot truly injected), so it doesn’t have to travel far.
Degassing and quality mean that when the material flows into the mold, it takes the air out as the material goes in. If air stayed in, it would make for some big issues. This also has to be balanced with the fact that where the air goes out won’t affect the model quality. Sprue balance means the sprues have to be nearly identical in weight to the other side of the sprue; if they are uneven, it could easily clog and unfilled elements.
The Metal Molds
The molds themselves are cut from aluminum, and each one has to last for at least 100,000 cycles! As we said above, the CNC (Computer Numeric Control) machine can take between 5-9 days to cut half of a mold.
You can see the CNC machine in action, and the needles change size throughout the process to ensure they get a detailed mold by the end!
Final Thoughts
Overall, Archon Studio employs about 80 people in two shifts, making millions of sprues every year, which is pretty wild to think about!
They make sprues for more companies than you may think, so it’s really cool to see inside their studio!
If you are curious about the whole review with more details, don’t forget to watch the full video above! Since he has so much great content, why not check out what else he has done? Also, be sure to Subscribe to Goobertown Hobbies if you enjoy his content!
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What do you think of how hard plastic sprues for miniatures are made at the factory?
About the Author: Travis Pasch
Travis Pasch
Job Title: Head Writer & Editor
Socials: @paschbass
About Travis Pasch: Travis has been a Warhammer 40k hobbyist since the 1990s, playing the game since Third Edition. Through extensive traveling, he’s seen a lot of the miniatures hobby from across the world, giving him a unique perspective on the latest gaming topics and trends.
Travis’s brother even owns a commission painting studio, where he’s picked up a lot of good advice and techniques for painting Warhammer and tabletop miniatures over the years, as well. Travis joined the Spikey Bits team in 2019 and has been the lead writer since 2020.
Currently, he’s working on converting all his 40k Adeptus Mechanicus models and becoming a true tech enjoyer, complete with both sad and happy robot noises!
