Feb 08 2010
BrickArms Auto-9 Prototype Mold
this is the two part mold used by brickarms to make their custom minifig weapons, via an injection mold process pretty much the same as how lego do it. and as it so happens how Amazing armory do it. now this is a two part mold, its dirt cheap – literally, the mold will be around $xx,xxx but you can literally produce xxx,xxx with four to a mold its around x,xxx,xxx in turnover if you manage to sell all of it and ‘expire the mold. pretty amazing stuff. now, a two part mold can only really make simple designs because of the way the mold opens. to give you an example in the case of amazing armory items 4 even 5 part molds are some times used, obviously the more parts to a mold the more detailed and expensive it gets.
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To be clear, this is a PROTOTYPE mold that Will cut at home using his personal CNC machine. BrickArms production molds are much, much larger, more complicated, and extremely expensive, especially when you’re using only high-end US production, as Will does.
from what i understand its all relative, so a bigger mold would have 8 -16 items on it…if it cost $xxx,xxx, and you can still mold xxx,xxx times but produce double if not quadruple the amount of items it would still work out dirt cheap, relative to the amount you could earn back in profit, assuming you were selling every single item…economies of scale and all that. now i’m not suggesting BA stuff is over priced…just toying with numbers.
Quite honestly, you’re make assumptions about how BrickArms accessories are produced as well as the relative costs of production and supporting a business that simply aren’t accurate. Producing custom accessories of BrickArms quality not to mention supporting the business to takes an incredible amount of time and resources. Producing prototypes is relatively inexpensive for Will to do, but there’s nothing “dirt cheap” at all about taking those designs to the mass production level.
Will is exceptionally grateful that the community has made BrickArms as successful as it is, but no small amount of that success is funneled directly into producing even more great accessories and other fun projects.
as with any business, its very simple, drive down costs, i’d do it if i was in wills position, there’s nothing wrong with that, everyone has to earn money to live, and to be fair BA products are good quality and cheap to the consumer, i don’t work at brick arms, so all this is theoretics, as i’ve made pretty clear in the language, if you read closely i didn’t mention this was brickarms business model as such so don’t take it so personally.
if you really what to be padantic the yes there are things i haven’t cconsidered – shipping, distribution, design time etc etc. which all cost some thing, if you really what to throw your dummy out of the pram – even electricity and the plastic will eat away at margins…no one’s arguing that. i’m merely pointing out in this post, using that particular mold as an example, that the more you produce and the more you ship, the cheaper each item gets. the more complex the more expensive the items gets. that simple, if you’re taking it personally thats not the intention.