Stumped on foam

[Mitchell Andrus]

Well, I'm stumped on foam. I have the need to place pen sets into gift boxes, but the best I can come up with is to hold the box, pen and pencil in place inside the gift box is to cut spaces in fairly stiff foam, on the laser, of course.

Clear lidded stationary boxes about 5" x 8" x 1" will work fine. I'm just unfamiliar with all of the various kinds of foam out there.

I'm hoping to find something grey or black, open cell, fairly dense, 1/2 to 5/8 thick, and won't make a mess inside the laser. Other than all that, I'm good!!!! The stuff at upholstery shops is way too soft.

Anybody work with anything like this before??

Mitch

[Rodne Gold]

I do a lot of foam inserts , works very well , but you need to go a foam or rubber supplier to get the correct densitys and thicknesses , we use medium density closed cell foam thats normally dark grey. the laser seems to work well even on thick stuff , we can easily cut 1"+ thickness with straight sided cuts.
Im in south Africa , so can't help with specific suppliers, however if you have a shoe factory or a podiatrist near you , phone em , they use the foam you want for shoe components or diabetic/orthopedic shoe inserts (podiatrist) and in fact you can probably pick up business from both as the laser generally processes a lot of the materials they use. We cut the foam /cork/liner blanks for the local podiatrists and they sculpt and assemble them for specific sho inserts.

[Mitchell Andrus]

Thanks, Rodne. Glad to hear up to an inch cuts well.

Mitch

[Dave Jones]

The foam for diabetic shoe inserts would be a "breathable" foam (I assume that means open cell) so air can pass through it to the foot.

Rodney, any idea what the chemical names or composition is for that kind of foam? There are hundreds of places to buy foam over here, but I don't know which is which.

And I don't know which ones might contain things bad for the laser, like PVC. Any thoughts about what that type of foam is called? Or the checmical name for the dark gray one you mentioned?