A Visit to Griffin Moulds

On Friday June 16, 2017 I stopped in at the Griffin Moulds factory located in Birminghan, UK to meet with the staff and to get a look see at how things were going. Graham Cummings had picked me up at the Coventry rail station and from there we made the short 30-minute drive to the factory.

Whilst there, Jane (the owner) gave Graham and I a tour of the factory, which I had not seen since June 2015. Jane has brought a considerable amount of organization to the operation since taking over the management of the company, adding more employees so that there are at least two people with knowledge of every function of the business. So if one person leaves or is indesposed, there is another person as backup that can step in and take his place.

The premises are in tip top and Bristol shape, making it easy for the casting personnel to find the moulds and set up everything for each spin casting section. The shipping area is nice and clean and well organized. Since my last visit to the factory, Jane has added more mould makers and will be introducing 3-D printing towards the end of this year. In fact, they were working on some prototypes of new resin and plastic products using this new technology. I was very impressed with quality of the prototypes and this bodes very well for Griffin's future.

Shipping times have been dramatically reduced so it is easier for me to restock my inventory and keep backorders to a minimum. We had a particularly large new order come in about two weeks before my visit and they were already casting the order for me - with delivery yesterday!

I thought that readers of this blog would be interested in seeing some of the pictures that I took during my visit as it gives you a better idea of how your figures are made. See the captions to the pictures below:

Here is what a figure mould looks like. We get 16 infantry figures in each mould, top and bottom halves of the mould are shown above.

The metal is injected into the mould using a centrifugal spinner that ensures that the metal will flow to the furthest reaches of the mould and produce a clean casting. This eliminates those bothersome "spiders" and bits of sprue that are left on figures that use the older technology drop cast moulding technique. The picture above depicts a single spin of metal figures  as they are pulled out of the mould.

They were spinning some of the new Crann Tara castings during our visit.

A view of the storage room where all of Griffin's customer moulds are stored.

A side view of the Minden/F&D collection of moulds. We have approximately 400 moulds in aggregate covering both figure ranges.