I'm looking for a plastic tray (almost exactly the same as what's included with monopoly) to hold the board, money and playing pieces, and deeds cards. Does anyone know where to source these from ready made? Or is it standard practice to get them made to your specification?
where do you get plastic trays from?
Thu, 03/24/2005 - 17:54
Sun, 04/03/2005 - 20:18
#4
where do you get plastic trays from?
You should look in the phone book under plastics for a thermal former or vaccuum former. You could look up plastics supply and phone them for information on a vaccuum form shop near you. Also look up packaging.
The method is fairly simply, a sheet is heated and sucked into a mould then trimmed using a press. Economy moulds are made out of wood particle board which you can make yourself is you know the size of the moulders vacuum box. More expensive patterns are made out of aluminum. The size of the moulders vacuum box will determine if you use multicavity or not. In most cases they have a small machine which can handle 1' x 1' but the material comes in 4 x 8 sheets so its often cheaper to do a larger size multicavity to economize on larger production qties.
The moulder will often have a some material left over from other jobs which you could purchase.
Mon, 04/04/2005 - 09:40
#5
where do you get plastic trays from?
Great input!
PREnterprises wrote:
The size of the moulders vacuum box will determine if you use multicavity or not.
By multicavity, do you mean that multiple molds are used to form multiple inserts from the same sheet of plastic?
What about asking the protoparts store if they could stock a generic insert designed to fit in the game boxes? Something like the generic midline Fantasy Flight or Mayfair inserts (3 standard sized wells for cards, the rest of the room divided into 2 or 3 wells for counters or other generic playing pieces and enough room at the top for a quadfold board)? Would there be any interest?
Mon, 04/04/2005 - 16:22
#7
where do you get plastic trays from?
Quote:
Or are they included in commercially available games and you're just using them as examples of what you'd like to see?
Bingo! Fantasy Flight has a well known (infamous?) business decision of using one standard tray for all of their Silver Line series of games. The tray has three bridge-card sized wells along one side and a long well (with "FANTASY FLIGHT" molded into it) that fills up the remaining space. This is clearly a cost saving initiative, using one tray for all of their silver line of games (the silver line is a more moderately priced line to begin with, I'm sure this move helps them maximize their profit).
I'm not sure if Mayfair has done the same thing with their mid-sized boxed games, but my copy of Modern Art came with an insert that looked far too generic to be specific to the game.
It makes good sense to save as much cost as you can (or to make something available to people like us). The only down side to it in a published game is that it has the feeling of being bashed to gether from incongruous parts.
I'd like to nkow if they're available in general, but I have a suspicion that you will ahve to get them custom made for you. Most plastic fabricators should be able to do it, it's a simple vacuum molding technique to make them, but the original mold may be costly to have made. Not having done so myself, I couldn't give you an indication of exactly how costly.
Are you publishing a game, or just looking for some inserts for a prototype? If you're creative enough, you may be able to make your own with simple wooden or plaster molds. Here are some links with instructions for making your own vacuum forming table:
http://members.aol.com/GCGassaway/vacuform.htm
http://www.studiocreations.com/howto/vacuumtable/index.html
In concept, it's very easy to get high quality results from a home made vacuum forming rig as long as you pay attention to the quality of the forms. Hopefully I'll be trying my own as soon as I get some time!
Wouldn't it be great to have a small variety of inserts available for the protopart boxes...