production mold for figures

ive heard some talk of a 2 part mold for a figure? how many part molds were used for figures?

i only ask as im soon to be in possesion of a short pour figure. and someone banded the word 2 part mold...

thanks

no idea either dude , im eager to hear about it also

Here is a picture that I took in Orlando in april, of the Lili Ledy production. As you can see. One mold would make the torso's, and another probably for the limbs & heads.

I have pictures of some steel moulds somewhere, but will have to find them. I can show you some pictures of my rubber moulds as well. similar idea to the steel moulds.
I'll try and find them, this afternoon.

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Here are some pictures of Uzay steel moulds from the collection of Joe Y.  Hopefully he will allow me to use a couple of pictures, just to explain the purpose of 2 piece moulds.

They used 2 part moulds, because of all the cavities & indentations on the parts.  They bolt the two haves of the moulds together and inject the plastic into the mould.  Then they separate the halves, and push (eject) the parts out of the mould once they have cooled enough.  That's why we see ejector pin marks on the parts.
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I used a similar method.  Except I poured liquid resin into the mould and put the top piece of the mould onto the bottom.  This would push out any excess resin out a vent hole that I made in the top part.  I would then put elastics around the two halves, until the resin hardened and cured.  Then I just pulled the two halves apart and popped the pieces out of the mould.
If it was a one piece mould, there would be no way of getting the parts out, with out destroying the mould each time.

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There is some really good video's of the production process & sonic welding in this thread.

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All the steel moulds used to produce the figures where in two parts, as in a front and a back. The original sculpts where carefully made in such a way as to allow the piece to be produced in a two part mould, this wasn't always easy on the limbs, but the line can always be seen as it can on the head. The torso parts where different because they where a two part piece anyway so no separation line is present as one part of the mould was the front/back and the other was the interior of the front/back.

Each mould would contain several cavities, so more than one of the same piece was produced with each plastic injection.

The number of these two piece moulds required to make one figure depended on the component parts and plastic colours needed.

Example: Luke Bespin

1 Mould for the torso parts, it's likely that both the fron and back torso parts where in the same mould, although it is possible that there was a separate mould for front and back.
1 Mould for the limbs, again, it's likely that the legs and arms where made in the same mould on the same sprue but it is possible that there was one for each however I find this unlikely (I'll explain in a minute)
1 Mould for the head, it is likely in most cases that the head was made in a separate mould than the limbs because in most cases the head is made out of a different colour plastic than the limbs, so it would require a separate mould.

If you actually look at the vast majority of figures, they have the same colour arms as legs, I think only about 12 out of the entire line have different colour plastics which would have meant 2 moulds.
Good evidence to suggest that the arms and legs where produced in the same mould on the same sprue is Han Solo. His arms are white but his legs are black. The earliest versions of the figure had white plastic legs which suggests the same mould. However ultimately they became black plastic. Logic dictates that a second mould for the legs was produced separate from the arms for cost effectiveness. Painting the whole thing must have been an arse.
Despite the fact that Luke has legs which 95% are brown, they still used white plastic and painted the brown.

Having one mould for limbs is more cost effective than having two, but there are times when maybe having two is more cost effective than doing fuck loads of painting.
Sometimes changing the look of the character worked too.
Walrus man clearly wears an orange jacket, do we really have to make a seperate mould for a shitty back ground character or shall we just give him blue arms and make one mould?

this is a great thread what initiated my query was a thread on facebook which was a joke only 1 constructive comment was said all the rest were puns on the fact a figure had 1 foot missing. i contacted the guy who made the initial question querying its error. £8 was passed and its now mine. il post it up in the new additions thread for your guys perusal. its a great short pour :-)

this is where forums rule and facebook suffers!

poncho wrote:this is where forums rule and facebook suffers!

I fully agree with you Chris!

very interesting, I'm used to making both plaster and silicone moulds so I understand the process, glad to see there are still original moulds out there, glad they were saved