How Models are Made: Injection Molding Hard Plastic Sprues - HIPS Polystyrene Minis. 

It's so awesome that they were willing to work with goobs and give us a behind the scenes and how the sprues are made super interesting tbh

Archon are absolute champs. So thankful for their partnership to help me achieve what is a pretty unsurmountable task for some dude that just crafts things on the internet.

As someone who works as a injection moulding engineer I got to say that its absolutely insane and hard to make those perfect there's a lot of issue with machines, material and just hard work to make the product perfect so I can tell you those guys are doing a great job and I wish I worked for them could have some extra bits for free XD

28 years in injection molding. I'm a process engineer. Just a note: the "sprue" is the initial part that is shot. Then the "runner", is the rest that fill in the parts. I do this all day, every day. Good video

You really outdid yourself this time Goobs. As someone who loves shows like "How It's Made" and "Unwrapped", this was an amazing video! 🤘🖤

I mean this is the nicest way possible Brent. Between your normal tone and cadence while narrating, and the educational and entertaining field trip to a factory… This is like the most awesome episode of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood EVER!

7:30 Props to him for being so open to sharing how they managed to make a better product. Im sure a lot of other people would have been super secretive and called it a "trade secret"

I'm a machinist for a living, Warhammer figurines were something regularly in the house from my younger brother but we were both pretty nerdy 🤓 and I really appreciated the factory tour portion because I've always been curious what type of equipment they were using to do micro mold machining. Excellent video! I really appreciated the mold designer explaining how they lay out the figures with various rules to the layout I've never seen that covered before and it was fascinating. Minor thing- the tools they are using to create your molds are not drills, they're called endmills. They are milling cutters that can cut in straight lines in any direction. Drills can only make holes 🤓

This is one of the coolest miniature videos I've ever watched!

Something I really appreciate about your channel is that I'm entertained, but also, I learn each time. Whether that be about some kind of painting skill, the mentality of painting and hobby time, or the nuts and bolts of production. I really appreciate your efforts!

The tv show "How Its Made" was one of my favorites, and I could watch episode after episode for hours on end in rapt fascination. This could easily have been part of an episode of that show and I was no less fascinated by it. Thanks so much for sharing it!

I’m overwhelmed with all the clipping and glueing of these fiddly parts. The models are awesome and they were super inexpensive.

I really appreciate this close look. I study the history of plastics and molding and honestly it is incredibly difficult to find good "behind the scenes" looks at this sort of thing. Thanks!

Fascinating video. Thanks for sharing. Sidenote: For anyone else curious about that stylus device being used at 1:18 , I believe it's called the Geomagic Touch.

This is one of the most interesting videos I've seen this year.

That's pretty cool! Great to see behind the scenes.

I used to work industrial maintenance for plastic injection molding, you gave a solid explanation of how the mechanisms work of the overall process!

They do great work! I design plastic parts, and I cannot imagine how tough it must be to try to account for draft and undercuts on models like this. In my industry, you CNC the mold, but handpolish the core and cavity features, or etch them with textures. Having to actually CNC every detail with no follow-up polishing is insane, and I'm not surprised one mold half takes nine days of machining time. Incredible work everyone!

That was a cool peek behind the scenes. Makes me appreciate the magic bandai uses for their multi-coloured/multi-opacity gunpla sprues even more

How it's made, for miniatures, with Brent's voice. That's a nice start of the weekend.

Always wanted to see a video like this ! Literally one of the most interesting hobby videos I’ve ever seen. This is one of those things as a hobbyist that you wonder about a lot !

Love all the Archon minis and D&L. Some amazing minis coming out of there. Can't wait to receive the Encounters terrain.

My family used to run a CNC workshop in our case it was brass fittings (gas lines etc) so just the sounds of the workshop even without seeing the machines immediately brings back memories. In my case it was putting millions of fittings, O rings & nuts together. :P

Thanks so much to everyone who helped make this video and thank you Brent for bringing this to us! I have always wished for such an extensive look into how the good stuff is made.

As a proud owner of several kickstarter-worth of their terrain and miniatures, I am very happy to see You cooperating with them! BTW, their quality is very good to excellent, and one can clearly see the progress in quality over time and editions as well.

Incredible video. Love to see behind the scenes stuff like this because often certain companies often try to be quite secretive about their processes.

This is some 1990's Discovery Channel grade content! Love it

As a production cost analyst, this video gives an awesome insight into the overhead and materials cost of plastic miniatures. Thank you so very much for this.

Archon Studio is our national treasure :)

So cool! This is so interesting to me, I love it when you get technical and show us behind the scenes of the hobby industry.

I especially like it when you give your technical-scientific touch to the channel. I think it's your personal brand within the content creators of the hobby and someone covering that space is really appreciated. Keep it up!!

I really love archon studios. Good quality and reasonable prices. I just wish they carried a more comprehensive lineup of generic fantasy minis

The clear plastic work-around is very clever. Love it

This was super cool. Archon studios has been my favorite company to get models from since the first Dungeons & Lasers Kickstarter -- the care they put into runner placement makes assembling them so nice.

Brent is the kinda homie who lets you deadlift and doesn't feel compelled to give you unsolicited advice on your form. A true hero.

As someone whose career is in manufacturing, this video is awesome! I love seeing these kind of machines.

As someone who 3d prints a ton but HATES superglue, polystyrine is such a wonderful material

Great video, Brent! A big thank you to Archon Studios for letting us see behind the scenes!

Brent cracks me up when he does the shots of himself looking in awe at sprues and models 😅. Love this channel!

Swietny material. Pozdrawiam cala ekipe. Najwyzsza jakosc, to gwarancja sukcesu.

Awesome video, love behind the scenes stuff like this. Archon seems like a pretty cool company to let us peek behind the curtain like this. Had no idea it took that long to CNC the molds - I knew they were expensive, but a whole week of tooling for just one half is crazy. Bunch of hard working, talented people over there!

This is fascinating. I have always wondered exactly how injected plastic molding worked for polystyrene sprues. I had no idea that the injection happened so fast with that much pressure. Jarek's explanation on sprue design principles was super interesting as well. Great video all around.

The hobby scientist hits again and once again we learn and become a little bit smarter about the world. Thank you Brent!

Eternally gratefull for being able to watch this video. I asked GW back on his day on his IG for a video like this.

As someone who aspire to one day start a miniature business, this video is more important than you'd think

Brent, your in-depth videos are so good! That even my father who is not even close a miniature enthusiast, but is a engineer, loves to listen to all the information you give! Thank you so much in behalf of the Carvalho's father and son geeking moments xD

Love Archon Studios products, and their customer service is beyond amazing. Had a broken piece in a sprue and they sent me an entirely new set. They’ve got my business for life!

This is a great video. Pretty cool to see that so much can be recycled.

SO interesting Brent! Thanks for sharing this tour with the rest of us! So much about the world of mini's I never even thought about! Thanks for bringing it to every ones attention!

That was super interesting! Thanks a lot to you and the CEO of Archon for this guided tour! It is really impressive to see the amount of engineering and equipment that goes into making our plastic models. Next video, how resin models are made?!? 😅😁

Omg they're from Poland! That's awesome! Great video!

Well told. Fascinating peek behind the scenes. A friend once invited me to a qualification run of a vehicle dashboard injection mold. Everything was gigantic. Enormous hydraulics. Huge machine footprint. But the same principles.

This is a great video to show the production side of the hobby, I've watched other videos about injection molding but it's nice to see one from the miniatures perspective.

I love these behind the scenes videos and to see how things are done. Well done ans thanks to everyone who played their part in that video!

This was super interesting. Thanks for making the video and to Archon for allowing you a peak inside the process.

Thanks for sharing the manufacturing process for most, if not, all of the miniatures we purchase for all of the tabletop gaming systems. I greatly appreciate all of the work, and expense, that goes into it.

Awesome and informative video, shows just how much work (and money) goes into making just one sprue. I'm really proud to be Polish and to see a Polish company like Archon Studio grow, do it right and stay in touch with their growing fanbase gives me a warm feeling in the heart 💚

This was neat, thank you guys for putting this together for us.

I've always wanted a documentary series about model development from concept to consumer for a while now... not necessarily for me, but to give other people a better appreciation of how much time and work goes into a single new kit. So it's nice to get a video showing part of that process. Now, to put the scale of operation into perspective, we see about 7 Injection machines in this video, while GW has 43 operational injection machines as of their last financial report, and they also run day and night with factory workers on different shifts. People may not realise, but they've more than doubled the number of machines in just the past 5 years or so, and are constantly expanding. In fact, GW recently moved paint production/bottling into their own building further down Willow Road to free up space for more injection machines in the future. It's also surprising that GW only seem to have recently begun using their own "granulator" to recycle finished products and turn them back into raw materials. I'm still hoping for the day they will put recycling bins in their stores so I can get rid of all the old empty sprues I've been saving over the year... but that's still probably some time off.

Awesome video! Very fascinating seeing all the machinery and processes in action. Big respect to Archon Studios for sharing their time with you & us!

Really amazing look at how these miniatures are made! This channel really does an amazing job of making videos about the hobby that I have never really seen before. I can't wait to see what Archon Studio does in the future.

excellent video, very interesting ! Thanks Brent, do not hesitate to do more in the futur ! And huge thanks to Archon Studio too !

Gosh, this is DELIGHTFULLY technical. :D

Brent out here giving us new episodes of How It's Made.

Very cool! I've heard a lot of how this works before but seeing it really puts it into perspective. This had the look and feel of the "How It's Made" show that used to be on Discovery Channel. Really enjoyed it.

I've actually been kinda craving a video like this as im always interested in how things are made. A few of my searches have come up empty handed so when I happened to stumble across this video I was very happy indeed!! Thanks for taking the time to make this video!! It was very interesting to see how they put it all together for us!!

What a fascinating video! I’ve always wondered what it was like behind the scenes at some of these companies that manufacture our favorite minis for our favorite games. Thank you! ❤

It is so good to see the process behind the making of the amazingly detailed models. Thank you for the tour, both educational and entertaining.

This is one of the best hobby videos I've seen yet! I've always wanted to see all the various stages in model production. So glad you got to visit! I wish they would give such tours at Warhammer World in Nottingham, England. Maybe I'll ask next time I visit...

I worked in an injection moulding factory one summer when I was at Uni 25 years ago so this brought back some memories. I'm glad other people can see the process and how expensive the upfront costs are. I've never seen how sprues were designed so that was great to see. Shame Wizkids didn't use Archon for their Framework series as their sprues were surprisingly sparse compared to Archon and GW. (The price of those Kobolds!)

As a CNC machinist, this was the video I've been waiting for! Thank you so much Brent!

Thanks for making all these videos, and thanks for archon for sharing this with the community! It's great to learn more about the tools and martials in the hobby and no one has content even close to this! Thank you!

Embrace the science video! I rate this the same as RU-vid 10/10! Course mines a bit more positive than them but hey at least they are trying..... ;)

“You can never have too many peasants trapped in purgatory” - Goobertown 🤝 late stage capitalism 😉😂😂🤣

Always love your deep-dives into the science and engineering that goes into the hobby. Keep up the good work!

I am even more happy that i baked their Kickstarter now. Thanks for sharing this Video.

Seeing the sprues made just reminds one how much a ripoff GW's prices are.

Now that was cool! I learned some new stuff today. Thanks Archon for the peak inside the factory and thnx brent for making these kinds of things happen!

Brilliant video, thanks for this change from the norm, great that they actually showed how it's done. Well done to you and the company.

This is so cool, big fan of Dungeon and Lasers miniatures

As a lifelong modeler of scale kits (I am 65 and retired now) I find this video quite interesting. I've encountered a lot of variation in brittleness and flexibility of styrene in different kits.

Fascinating! Thanks for revealing this part of our hobby!

LOVE this video! It was really cool to see how modern manufacturing works for this kind of product, and cool to see that the defects can be reused!

Marvelous! Thanks to Archon for this sneak peak! And thank you for sharing this with us!

We have all seen videos about injection moulding but this one stands out. This was such an in depth coverage and I liked seeing the work they do just to design the sprues. Very well done I really enjoyed the video.

This was a video that made me SMILE wide to see! (Midway through it now.) I LOVE how it is made type videos. So thanks so much for doing the work to get this one done!

This is amazing and I have so much love for the people that make these products now!

This was fantastic! Thanks for the peek behind the scenes. Fascinating stuff, Mr. Goobertown!

Wow, this is super cool. I really like to see how stuff I use is made. Thanks Brent for showing us this factory.

Really good overview on how things work. I worked in injection molding for 17 years Over that time I did many things, and wore many hats. I was a press operator, material handler, mold setter, set up the machines, helped fix the machines, helped repair the tooling, scheduled production, and handled shipping, receiving, and inventory. Of course, back then the cavities were made out of steel, or if cooling was critical, beryllium.

What a cool look behind the scenes! It's a very different kind of model kit, but the folks at Bandai have a process for modular molds and multiple color injection that feels like magic too, but their kits are made with mechanical motion in mind instead of a static little guy that will be painted. Injection molding for kits is really fun to learn more about!

Very interesting peek at the manufacturing process! Thank you Brent.

Great behind the scenes. Injection molding is one of those things that's ridiculously difficult that most people don't even think about. Imagine before CNC machining when the molds were carved by hand or cast on top of hand carved positives. Mold and die making was an entire industry in itself.

Can confirm, I am also a huge fan of HIPS.

FINALLY!!!! Somebody in this world thought of creating a informative video of this subject !!!!!! Ive searched but never found anything of the sort since 1970.. Thanks for sharing this..!

I remember on their first kickstarter, they would show the tools they were making and then if one was cut wrong and there was going to be a delay due to it, they would show the miss-casts. This factory walk through was fascinating.

This is great! What a wonderful opportunity to share this whole process!

Archon Studio is Polish ?! Woww, that's awesome, i did not knew this.

This is th ebest video on injection molding I have ever seen. Thanks.

Totally agree with your closing words: Thanks for sharing these technical insights!