Foamcore boards

I've been using standard 5 mm foamcore of the sort that you matt pictures on for presentations as a base for extrusions. The .8 x 1 metre board (yes, those are true metric measurements) It was obviously pressed and cut to metric standards. A sheet cost me $7 retail.

I can not recommend this material enough. HDPE extrudes onto it without warping, shrinkage or peeling. The HDPE sticks very firmly to the paper sheathing. You can peel it off with a mat knife, however, without a lot of drama and without seriously damaging the surface.

It scorches just a bit if I leave the extruder head in close proximity to it, but the foam does not appear to perish beneath the paper. I'll know more about that when I'm finished with the 8" x 11" piece that I taped down to my xy work surface.

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Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Thomas A. Edison

I've just had to replace the foamboard and was able to cut across some of the HDPE tracks that I extruded across the surface. Those that I laid down on the surface caused no perishing of the foam beneath the paper. Those that I smeared across the paper with extruder head had significant recession of the foam beneath the tracks. Places where I parked the extruder head above the paper close by while it was hot showed cratering in the foam beneath the paper.

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Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Thomas A. Edison

interesting... it would be nice to get some definitive tests on different materials and how they stack up against each other in a few different categories:

* adhesion of plastic
* cost
* re-usability (do you have to keep replacing foam boards?)

***do you have to keep replacing foam boards?***

Yeap. OTOH, I can do about a dozen parts prints on one of them on one side. I'm not sure whether I ought to be using both sides yet.

I can cut about 12 out of a sheet that costs about $7. That works out to about $0.60/sheet. Figuring on a dozen prints on one side and not using the other that works out at about $0.05/part for foamboard.

Would a piece of paper firmly clamped of a 1/4"thick mdf board do the same? MDf is pretty straight. Or simply a piece of glass?

The xy working table on Tommelise is tempered float glass. I've not tried extruding directly onto it for the simple reason that it was hard to make and having a very hot metal extruder barrel touching whether by design or accident is not an experiment I'm happy about doing this minute. :-s

So far I've extruded onto corrugated cardboard (too uneven), paper (too flexible and allows the cooling plastic to warp) and a poplar board (the cooling plastic extrusion tends to separate and warp).

For now, foamcore board seems to get me away from the warping and separating problems). Something similar is apparently used in the Stratasys 3D FDM printer according to Adrian and Ed.

My Repstrap uses an MDF work surface. It's pretty durable, has reasonable adhesion (but not too much) and is cheap.

I haven't printed much on my machine yet, but what I have done was with CAPA and it's been great as a surface for that.

Cool! I've got a chunk of MDF left over from building Tommelise. I'll cut a piece off of that and see how it works with HDPE.

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Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Thomas A. Edison