Nathan,
Are you suggesting that the pink home insulation foam is better than Styrofoam? What do you think that stuff is made from? (Hint)
Nathan,
Are you suggesting that the pink home insulation foam is better than Styrofoam? What do you think that stuff is made from? (Hint)
If I am not mistaken, the pink and blue stuff has different properties than the white stuff used for packing. I am pretty sure that the pink and blue stuff can't be cut with a hotwire because everyone that I know who has used it cut it with various forms of knives and saws.
-Nathan Sandmeyer
UAH FSAE
Chief Engineer
http://www.chargermotorsports.com
Improvise...Adapt...Overcome...
I suspect that the properties are largely the same. The home insulation stuff is very easy to cut with a hot wire cutter – we have done a lot of it here. It starts to melt around 220?F.
We use High-Density Polyurethane foam from General Plastics for a great deal of our tooling. It's good stuff – easy to machine, sand, finish, and paint.
A word of warning on that insulation foam...if you can crush it with your fingers its probably not suitable for vacuum bagging...your part won't be the shape you intended...
And I've seen lots, and lots of the blue and pink polystyrene foam get cut with a hot wire...definetely possible...just a little on the nasty side of mold making...
The other thing to keep in mind is that you can't really sand that insulation foam...what I'm getting at is use proper tooling foam if you can...
-Travis
UW FSAE 05-06
WWU FSAE 02-04
Where did they get that picture of our new car?
Alumni, University of Washington
Structural / Mechanical Engineer, Blue Origin