[Geoff Maxfeild]

Sorry about that, the thing kept failing each time I did it.

[Geoff Maxfeild]

Hi Pedro! I loved sofubi so much, I decided to pursue making some. Here’s King Liger. I made him in association with Lullubell Toys. I hope to have a new colorway ready d-Con.
I hope to post more of my collection soon instead of just self promoting.

[Geoff Maxfeild]

I have noticed thousands of variations of this toy have been showing up more and more on my social media feeds. I don’t mean to be negative, but I just wish once there would be a toy that would saturate the market I could be more interested in. It’s a gundam with a hoodie, I get it, what’s next? Don’t get me wrong, the look is cool, but the whole hands in the pocket thing is a bit boring.

[Geoff Maxfeild]

So unfortunately I haven’t gotten to do much on that front 🙁
It’s like I know where all of the moving parts, but I have insane schedule that will not allow me to fully get started with the process, let alone the proper space for it. The copper cavities I have made may not even work due to them not having nickel plating. Lulubell toys ended up stepping in and getting the tooling made and the toys produced at this point.
I really want to get to that next level though. Here is the furthest progress I made:

Luckily there have been people watching my videos and have built off of them. I highly recommend people check out Official Toy’s instagram: https://www.instagram.com/official.toy/
They are out of Slovenia, and have been trying out these techniques as well.

[Geoff Maxfeild]

In all honesty, I’m nowhere close 🙁 .
I’ve done some copper cavities, but have not gotten to pull anything yet. I still want to do some tests with what I have to see what happens, but it may be sometime due to my insane schedule. The tooling that I ended up making didn’t meet the standards of the Japanese factory when I made my King Liger figure, so I reluctantly had to have all to the tooling made over seas in Japan. I am still experimenting with more stuff in my spare time. It may be another few months. I am proud to say that I have influenced a few people around the world with my videos and they have built on my process since then.

Here is a link to my first results: http://neo-fighters.blogspot.com/2017/01/i-have-cavities.html

Also, these folks out of Slovenia have been doing more on their own based on my videos: https://www.instagram.com/official.toy/

I would love to see more people add to this process and beyond.

[Geoff Maxfeild]

So the biggest hurdle with the chemical baths that I found was what was it made out of. Most people were saying it was a salt-based solution called “torque.” The issue was that it wasn’t really explained beyond that. It’s pretty hard to find anything on the web that explains the ingredients of this and uses that name for it. I ended up rifling through old patents from shoe companies that used plastisol for rain boots and shoe soles and I was able to find out that it is a combination of sodium-nitrate and potassium-nitrate! These are fairly obtainable, and non toxic. I don’t however know what the ratio is, but it seems like a possible 1:1 (don’t quote me on that).

Another issue has been with platting. I keep getting confused of the steps with the electroforming. I have been able to successfully electroform copper on to my pieces, but the question is more about where does the nickel plate go. This is a much more dangerous process to do alone due to the chemicals involved, but a couple people who had followed my videos found a way to do it. There are plating companies out there that will do this, and it’s not too expensive. As far as I can tell, it’s a cost of nickel, followed by a thicker coat of copper. The nickle allows for the curred vinyl to slip out smoothly.

The biggest challenge is the plastisol itself. George on this week’s marsham episode said that the plastisol is a specific kind. I believe the brand is “kobasol” (spellcheck). I know that one that in the states, Alumalite makes one called “Alumasol.” This stuff is sort of a prosumer based material, generally used for fishing lure hobbyists. I am not sure of how it plays with slush casting, but I keep planning to call their hotline about it. They’re pretty helpful.

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