Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Citadel Finecast Miscasts - Part 2 - Replacement Miscasts

The replacements for the miscast Hellcannon I wrote about last week arrived.   I was a bit shocked to see that out of 10 replacement parts shipped, 8 of them had miscasts.

My previous theory about Games Workshop is the quality issues are on the production side.  Now I am wondering if the company as a whole doesn't understand what quality is.  Replacement parts, from what I have heard, are packed by the customer service rep who takes you phone call.

This means one of two things.

One, is that the customer service rep, who is aware I got miscasts just didn't care enough to check that the parts they sent were not miscast.

Or...

Two, that Games Workshop doesn't know what quality is, or thinks that what the community considers to be miscasts are not miscasts.

Either scenario is disturbing, and I truly hope it's the first one.  You can fix a lazy rep, though if the problem is truly systemic at Games Workshop and they actually think this type of casting is okay, its an even bigger problem. If this is the case, it should be 100%  unacceptable  to the community.

After calling Games Workshop to demand more replacements I am leaning towards the second scenario.  When I described the miscasts, how small bubbles were showing up on many surfaces, he tried to state that Liquid Green Stuff was made to fix that problem, just as green stuff was used to fix metal issues.  I retorted that I had never gotten metal models like this, and that I thought Finecast was supposed to be higher quality, not lower.  He had no response for that, and arranged to have more bits sent.  I am hoping these are much better. 

I took some pictures of each of the pieces I received as replacements and highlighted some of the problems.  I didn't take a picture of it, but the two cannon halves don't even fit together, one of the pieces is warped ( I think they didn't pour enough resin in the mold, as you can see through many parts of it) enough it won't fit with the other half.

You may have to click on the photos to enlarge them, so you can see the miscasts.












4 comments:

  1. Interesting. Looks like all the issues are coming from one direction, I guess the direction they're putting the resin in from judging by the flash.

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    1. I used to think it was a process issue, but at this point it has to be that GW just doesn't make quality a priority. A year later, this is silly. I work in manufacturing, and there is no way this many miscasts is getting to the customers without management saying its okay.

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  2. That sucks, I really wish they would get a handle on their FC QC.

    Kinda makes me happy I have 2 of the heavy as sin pewter Hellcannons.

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    1. I love the weight of Finecast, but if this is the best they can do I would welcome metal back. It's nuts that they can't get their act together.

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