I purchased a case of the 6mm grey depron from RCFoam. The price is great and the shipping time was awesome. However, my current project is made up of 7 sheets of foam. After getting everything successfully cut out, I started my usual dry test assembly. I discovered that the 6mm grey is not 6mm. It's closer to 5mm. All of the slots were sized for 6mm or 1/4". I assumed that the 6mm grey would be the same size as the white which in my experience is 6mm. Bad assumption on my part. I now have a large plane project with sloppy fitting slots. This was extremely dissappointing. Has anyone else used the 6mm grey from RCFoam?

 

I find most foam from order to order will be slightly different in thickness. I have not used the grey from RCFoam but have been making it a point to check it with a caliper and resize the plane if needed. Not that this is the answer but you can easily go into your sketchup file and with the ruler go to one of your tabs and snap a line on the width of your tab hit enter and it will ask if you want to resize your model say yes and you are good to go. Of course you have to make gcode for the files again! I had the same issue with the Blue foam FFF and sized it on 6mm when it is actually 5.5mm. I hate wasting foam myself :evil:

John

 

The problem with your suggestion, xtremeRCpilot, is that if you do the resizing as you described, the whole plane will be smaller, and quite a bit of it. Almost 20%, depending on the size you had originally.

 

I Agree Tiger, I guess I forgot to mention that!! Sorry, I was just looking at the bigger picture as this would only be a temporary fix or at least give someone an option for product inconsistency!! I have done this on occation but alway keep both files so at least they are scale. Also I have just redone the tabs which on a more precise plane is another option!! Hope this helps!!

John

 

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a way to make the width of the tab slots a Dynamic feature? Then you could simply go to an input screen, change the width of the slots, regen the g-code and Voila!

 

YES !! That would be awesome...

 

All the white foam I have used has been right on 6mm and the 1/4" slots work great. My experience to date with 5 saucers of varying sizes, the white foam was consistent at 6mm. Re-sizing a plane based on foam thickness does'nt sound like an good option to me. I ordered a case of the grey 6mm x 48" sheets for a 45" saucer I'm building and that's the first time I had run into a variance. I talked with Steve from RCFoam about this. He said the grey foam should be 6mm to 6.1mm. And, he did a spot measure of his stock and found that to be true. On rare occasion the white foam would come in at 5.1mm but that had been several years back. Steve was great to talk with and offered to replace the sheets used. I highly recomend RCFoam as a depron source. And, I will use this as a valuable lesson.

 

Good news KX... They are great folks !! I just ordered a bunch of foam last week and I too will check the thickness and make a note!! It is a bummer when you waste a sheet of this higher priced material