So, my beautiful white and silver Marmit Manta Ray arrived from Kaiju Taro, I am really very pleased! In the packet was also a magazine which was a gem in itself! There was a whole article showing how vinyl toys were cast from molds. Here are the series of pics in the article (I've tiled them vertically for easy viewing). If you are interested in reading the article (alas, I can't read Japanese), and maybe even giving a write-up translation, I can email you a pdf of 3-page spread-please PM me with your email addy.

Photos!




A smaller version of the casting above



Here is a mini-view of the magazine article. I can email you a full-size page (readable) file, but it is written in Kanji. I would love to have a translation of the article

Cool pics, that mold seems to have a buttload of excess vinyl though.

i've seen that article, and would love to see it translated too.

Whenever I see shots of the fresh-outta-molds vinyls they're like that. Many of them have that cupped appearance from the spout, but some of them seem to just have an extra 1" or so of vinyl that is to be trimmed off for popping the pieces together (obviously). We've got some good threads archived in here all about the mold & pulling process, including some videos that have been posted as well.

here's the thread with the video link, worth watch it

http://www.skullbrain.org/bb/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=25187&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

I have seen the process before but those ones seemed like as much excess vinyl as the actual figure

i love these articles on how they make vinyl figures. it's amazing how much work and skill goes into making them.

What's the story/background on this actual mini figure ? Pardon my ignorance, but it's the 1st time i see it around.

Nice visuals. Thanks for sharing. I too would like to know what it says though

That's Uncle K-T the..."mascot"...for Kaiju-Taro.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding about the process was that the excess vinyl isn't a problem: whatever's trimmed away gets tossed back into molten vinyl reservoir to be used in another pouring...

From what I've heard is you can't use "reuse" vinyl.

I'm told that in Japanese vinyl factories, that flash gets saved for reuse somewhere but they don't reuse it when making the toys.

Chinese vinyl producers are said to use vinyl that's not as "virgin" as the Japanese manufacturers and contains recycled materials.

Vinyl is a recycleable material. It is probably used to make signage or clothing by adding plasticizers. Greenpeace is trying to phase out the use of vinyl and CA is trying to ban the use of vinyl for packaging. EPA lists vinyl as a carcinogen. I guess I did learn something from school.

Actually there is no molten vinyl in the Marmit factory. They use liquid plastisol and it is "heat set" at about 300 degrees. Its a thick syrupy consistency and comes is big square metal drums about 4 gal. in size. I was at the same factory in the article two years ago when Sky Deviler was born. I have a disk full of pics somewhere. I do think the scraps gets sent out for recycling, everything in Japan does.

One thing you have to remember about the excess vinyl is that you need a certain amount of flash to demold the piece. The KT figure in the pic is a very small figure, about 2.5" long, and you need at least 1" or so of flash to grip with pliers/tongs to demold well. So if they were demolding a big piece, like the body for a standard size figure, it wouldn't appear to be quite so wasteful.