What must I do to create my own injection molded figurines? Tools equipment. How do they make the dies to begin with? I have oodles of ideas but I'm stuck.

Unless you are a mult-millionaire forget it :-)

Welcome to the site by the way ..Jim

Jim is right. Most injection molding tooling for plastic kits is 100% machined (as opposed to some parts as-cast) stainless steel. Pictures of the tooling I have see show it to be about 4 feet square and upwards of 2 feet thick. You are looking at probably upwards of $200,000 just for the tooling, not including the cost of the actual machinery to melt and inject the molten styrene.
I supervise a pattern shop in a foundry so tooling is sorta my thing...
Welcome aboard!!

Shaun

Welcome to the site.
Figure a few millon for start up cost for injection molding machines, a few mold makers, a few tool and die men, machine operators and mechanic for when they break down in the middle of a run, and don't forget the janitor, supplies, packaging, and advertising, about 5 to 10 million might get you off the ground.
A much cheaper and realistic approach might be resin casting. All the big resin caster started with an idea, a dream, and small.
You find a lot of sculptors and caster here willing to help you.

Ditto to Dave .... I started life a long time ago working in injection molding, base machine ... we'll call it a DIY entry level machine anywhere from $500K to a cool Mill. get a good machine with nozzel purges and auto hoppers, start digging ... around $5M now you're need an CNC to cut the dyes and a good programmer, starter model CNC $1.5M to the sky. Then there is tooling, dyes, waste, coolant, operators, maint. not to mention the 480V industial power for injection models and 240V three phase power for CNC's ... yep a good 10 or 20 million should get you setup ... now all you need is employees to run it all, and health care, 401K, taxes, insurance, etc etc ... ok make that 30 million and a lot of luck.
Might want to try resin casting first, still not cheap but affordable for most hobbist in the low $100 range for most everything you'll need to get started for small molds, tools, and supplies.
Bowjunky35 just posted a really good starter feature which can be found by clicking here

Dave

I currently work as a CNC programmer, and I have 10+ years as an operator, so if you can come up with the startup capital I would work really cheap for you.

Maybe he IS a million/billionair...in which case can I "borrow" a few bucks?
Welcome to the site though..I hope you can find some helpful ideas while you are here!

Sean Callaghan

Hey, but are you one of the creators of the site www.machinegewehr.com or somthing like that?

Welcome to the club Machingewehr

Welcome to the club Machingewehr, as you spend a little time here, you will find many of the people here are just full of talent.

Look down in the soft skin section and you will see old Roo there has built many models from total scratch and has done an excellent job I might say, and he is just the tip of this iceberg.

There is many that done figures to, and a lot others that have been recognized for their talent, way to many to mention. They could help you get things pretty much figured out.

Kerry