Building Out a Custom Foam Tray Tutorial

With a new edition of Age of Sigmar came the desire for a new army by Romeo.  The new Soulblight Gravelords won him over, and while we were figuring out how best to protect and transport his newfound army, we stumbled onto the fact that we would need to create some Custom Foam.  The custom built Negash meant having to do some tracing for the specially built mini! 

We get asked for help in this department by many of our customers so we thought it would be a great idea to document this process and give a step-by-step guide.  

Let's begin!

Step 1: The first thing you would want to do is build the minis.  This is especially true if you plan on getting creative with your basing or adding some extra bits to a model to give it that special personal touch.  If you know you are going to be building to the letter of the instructions, our Battle Foam Custom Tray Creator should have those covered!

Step 2: Now that we have everything built, we want to lay the models out that need custom foam.  This helps you decide what we want to group together.  You will need to organize the quantity and type of trays you want to create. 

Building Battle Foam Custom Trays is ideal for Heroes, Cavalry, and other models that are smaller in number and/or unique in shape and size.  This lets you be efficient with the space you have in your desired bag. 

Pictured below you will see the models that Romeo wants to protect with a custom tray for his Soulblight Gravelords!

Step 3: Now that we have the models we want to protect with our Custom Tray, our next task is to visit the Battle Foam Custom Tray Creator.  

Whether you have a Battle Foam bag already or still need to purchase one, use the Bag Navigator to help load the right size of trays for your models.  The CTC will even help you purchase the best fitting bag for your game type and army. 

Our CTC recommended to Romeo the P.A.C.K. 720.  If you are a seasoned CTC pro or know what you are doing already, feel free to skip straight to creating.

Step 4: Since we selected the P.A.C.K. 720, the CTC already picked the appropriate tray size template. This custom build will use Battle Foam Large 15.5" x 12" foam trays. 

We now need to measure our tallest model or models and select the tray height.  Nagash is 5 inches laying down at his base, so we will select him since all other minis will be smaller in size and automatically fit in the tray. 

Step 5: Now that we have the big details like tray size and height figured out we can use the CTC to plug in our additional shapes! 

You can either use the Shapes Menu and go to the game and army you play, or you can use the Search Shapes feature and type in the names of your models to find them quickly.  As you can see, we found all the shapes we needed for the models Romeo was looking to protect.  

We carefully placed and spaced them but left a nice spot for our big Custom model Nagash. 

Remember that our techs will always review your designs before cutting and if an issue is noticed customer service will reach out and contact you. 

Step 6: The reason we did not put Nagash's shape using the CTC recommended version is because Romeo built his a little differently than how the instructions say. 

Romeo wanted his Supreme Lord to be extra special and feature all of his weapons on the model and this required a unique shape to be traced. 

This means we will need to create a trace to be given to the Design team. This along with the tray we created in the CTC will help finalize our desired final product. 

We will need to print off the Battle Foam Custom Order Forms, especially the Trace Form that feature a ruler on the page. This helps us size your designs so they are accurate to your physical model. 

Step 7: With our forms printed out, our first order of business is to lay Nagash down on a the paper in a manner that all his parts fit the paper. It's ok if it doesn't but make sure you use 2 sheets if models bleed over.

We want to leave the ruler area alone so we can check measurements during the scanning to digital process. Don't forget to put your name on each sheet you send in so we can keep your designs with your specific order.

Step 8: Get a pen or pencil that has a good point, and begin tracing.  

The key is to follow the lines of the model. Don't be too tight that the final shape is too snug, but don't be too loose as to let the model move around too much in the shape. Remember that the better your trace the better and more secure your model will be protected. 

Even though we didn't need to for Romeo's army we traced the other models to give examples on how minis of different sizes look while being traced.  We will be tracing over the whole outline with a sharpie in our next steps. 

Step 9: Now that we have our final pen traces, we will go over them with a black marker or sharpie to make the scanning process more accurate as well as clean up the roughness of the pen tracing.  

The outside edge of the black marker trace is what matters most, so covering up messy pen lines or miss-tracing internally should not alter the end result.

Step 10: As we finish each retrace with the black marker, we want to measure the tallest point of each model.  

We then want to write down the height of each model in the middle of each shape to let the designers know what size tray these will go in.  

As we can see Nagash comes in at 5" tall so our foam tray will need to be at least 5" tall to fit him. All the other models will be smaller and automatically fit this size tray. 

Step 11: Time to order! With our tray we created using the Battle Foam Custom Tray Creator, and our trace finished for Nagash, it is now time to send in our designs and place our order. 

First we will scan in the trace of Nagash to make it digital. Then we will order our Custom Battle Foam Large Tray ensuring we select the 5" height as well as attaching our Custom Tray Design and our scanned trace of Nagash file. 

With a little time, effort, and Battle Foam Magic, you now have a finished tray design!

Step 12: You can see, there are foam cut outs for some of the shapes still in the tray. This is an option you can select when ordering your Custom Foam Tray. 

This is important if you have models that have large differences in height within your design. You can then cut the shapes down to match the height you need so it isn't a chore getting the shorter models out of their spaces. 

Below is the tray with the shapes trimmed to the correct height and pushed back to the bottom of their respective spots.

Step 13: We can now enjoy our final product and the best storage and protection for our miniatures!

Romeo loved how all the Hero Vampires he has all fit into one tray. With over 7" of space still left in his P.A.C.K. 720 Romeo can fill it with additional trays for his troops and accessories.

We hope this detailed write-up helped explain how easy creating a custom foam tray can be. If you run into any snags or questions, feel free to use this guide, our Custom Order Form Page.

We are always available to answer questions via e-mail us at info@battlefoam.com or by calling us at 877-336-3626 M-F 8-5 Pacific Standard Time. 

UK and EU customers can reach us at infouk@battlefoam.com or call us at +44 (0) 1702 462 017