032 - Favorite Materials

Derek "MDF" Young and Darren "EVA" Moser talk about some of their favorite materials they like to work with.

Episode Transcript

(00:03):
Welcome to the nerd Polite. Welcometo the Maker's Method podcast here on the
Nerd Party Network. I'm your hostBaron Moser aka Doctor sci Fi, and
I'm joined as always by Derek Yellingof van Olds Props. And we're going

(00:24):
to be talking about some materials thatwe enjoy using. Who maybe we'll list
to. You're guaranteed to get too, at least maybe more than that,
maybe a dozen, we'll see.But yeah, how's your your workbench been
working? It don't really makes sense, but how is your I mean projects,

(00:47):
you're talking about how your project's beenand how is your non list taking
days going? Projects have been good. It's been really busy for me,
which has been great. It canbe good, but at the same time,
I'm often feeling a little like chickenwith its head cut off, and

(01:12):
you know, feeling all of theaches and pains that a small business feels
when you're you're starting to grow ata rate that is a little bit more
accelerated than you're used to, andyour mindset is still to like, buy
just enough of whatever material that you'reworking with U And so for me,

(01:38):
the biggest pain that I'm feeling rightnow the biggest growing pain is under buying.
And it's mainly acrylic and MDF forfor the laser. And my supplier
is like forty five minutes away,so it's that like, Okay, I'm

(02:06):
gonna go and I'm gonna buy,like maybe I'll buy an extra couple of
sheets of whatever, and like I'mon my way back from his shop and
like my phone lights up and youknow, a couple of new orders have
come in and it's almost like I'vehad to turn around and go back.
Yeah, I've had that happened whereI've ordered. I put in a big

(02:28):
order, so all the shippings inthere, everything's ready to go, and
then like a day or two later, I'm like, ah, I could
just have this one sheet of something, you know, a different color or
a different you know, clarity,but it was like that'll wait till next
time. So yeah, yeah,I mean thankfully, Yeah, forty five
minutes is not a terrible stretch todrive my vendor over at the Laser Cave.

(02:57):
Shout out to Pedro over at theLaser Cave. Super knowledgeable guy has
been extremely helpful, not just onmaterials for use with my glowforge, but
like you know, he's a smallbusiness owner and is experiencing the same challenges
that any of us. Do youknow who has the best rates on shipping

(03:21):
supplies? You know, like allthose types of things. So every time
I go down there, it's likean opportunity to have a good chat with
him, find out what he's workingon, find out what sort of you
know, places where we can savea little money are, and all that
sort of stuff. But I know, not this last time that I picked

(03:43):
up supplies, but the time beforeI had literally just hit pay on Venmo
and the Etsy cash register notification wentoff, and he looked at me and
just said, I know what thatsound is. Do you want to check
before you leave? Yeah? AndI did, And I ended up having
to spend another like thirty dollars withthe guy, which you know, thirty

(04:09):
bucks is not a ton of money, but also it's not it's not nothing.
Cash flow is still a thing forsure, and so you know,
in that sense, good problems tohave, clearly, um and uh,
you know, hopefully hopefully there's moreof those types of problems to have.

(04:33):
Yeah, my latest batch of acrilicI also got from the Laser Cave and
he shipped it really quickly. Again, the shipping is a little more than
some other places, not by much, but the fact that it is in
the same you know, almost thesame county, as it comes so much
quicker, and so that I thinkis worth it now to me to spend

(04:59):
a little more on that local,you know, production so that it gets
quicker, because I also, youknow, I'll let the I'll try.
It's just balancing, you know,Okay, how much black acrylic do I
have? How much clear acrylic doI have? And then I only try
to put that much on the storeso that I'm not trying to sell something
I don't physically have on hand.Right. But yeah, there's if in

(05:25):
a pinch, I could require morematerials, both the electronics and the acrylic
in maybe three days if I reallywas pressed. So I've actually kind of
bumped out some of the run timeson my products so that I have a
little bit of that window if Iget pinched. But it works out.
All these are the exciting things whenyou're selling things in a small store.

(05:46):
It's it's yeah, like I said, these are all good problems to have.
So aside from that, I didwake up to a text message from
a good friend of mine, JasperAnderson, who is a insanely talented sculptor,

(06:09):
model maker. I feel like he'sone of these people that like there's
nothing he can't do. But hesent me a text this morning with a
screen grab from Nerdict, who hadfeatured my Tusken Raider helmet, and you

(06:30):
said that video like really picked up, and now it's getting picked up,
picked up. Yeah, it's it'sfunny. I was sitting on the couch
watching watching TV before we recorded,and I pulled up my YouTube studio on
my phone because I wondered, likehow much of this traffic and how many

(06:51):
of the views could be attributed tothe article, and I did a quick
sort by video views and it's,you know, like I think I created
the account like six or so yearsago, but only really started posting weekly

(07:12):
at the beginning of the pandemic.And it's like the fourth most watched video
in my channel in probably the shortestamount of time, which is so strange
because I don't know, like Idon't understand viral videos. It's it hasn't
gone viral. Let me clarify.It's as of this recording has fifty one

(07:38):
thousand views, which believe me,I'm as confused as the rest of you.
But all that to say, itwas super nice of Michael Walsh over
at Nerniced to pick up the videoand say some really nice things about the

(08:00):
project and all of the linking,and to basically amplify the reach of the
project, because you know, likeevery little bit helps. Well, that's
the whole reason I do any ofthis stuff is to like put it in
front of people's eyeballs so that theycan say, like, yeah, I
could do that too. Like that'swhy I always tell people at the end
of the video to like go makesomething, like don't just sit here and

(08:24):
watch this stuff and then not doanything about it. Like literally, get
out, go make anything. Itdoesn't have to be a Tuscan Raider mask.
You know, I don't care whatyou make. Just make so exactly
at any rate. What about you, I know you're you're probably deep in

(08:46):
K twoso three point zero. Yeah, it's moving along. I purchase some
three D files from u Bionic,which is a maker who is been designing
these kind of amatronic hands, butalso that has kind of like a feedback
glove system, so all custom madefrom scratch that he's designed, and he's

(09:11):
kept doing iterations, and I actuallypurchased one of his hands a couple of
years ago with the thought of usingit in this capacity, but since then
he had actually refined the process evenmore so, basically, with a single
servo or a pull, there's linkagesin the entire finger now that curl it

(09:31):
and it gives a really nice movemotion. And so I just reached out
to him and said, hey,you know, I'm I'm not I can't
really afford the entire package of theyou know, the hand and the controllers
and the software and all of that. I'm just interested in the hand and
maybe the fusion files for it.And so he set me a discounted ticket

(09:52):
and I was able to buy thatin my K two budget, and then
started working on the fusion files,up the hand size by one point four
percent, and started to I'm justmodifying it to cosmetically look more like K
two's fingers. The linkages and allthe internal pivot points we'll have to stay

(10:15):
the same to maintain the functionality.But it's a modular design, so I
just have to design one finger andthen I can mirror that for the other
hand and that'll cover eight fingers,and then making some mods to the thumbs
so it's not that much work.And then the hand again, I'll just
I can scale that up stock tothe same scale and slot in each of

(10:37):
the fingers. So that was agood thing. That was a nice bit
of progress. Still, yeah,still trying to figure out that the next
best steps. But we're in Marchnow, so this was I told myself
March was going to be the animatronicmonth of getting all of his next servos

(10:58):
and all of that square away.So I need to start printing his head
and get the let the printer workwhile I'm working, so it can it
can get it done. And nowthat I have new print heads from my
printer, that shouldn't be a problemand I have filament, so it's just
a matter of getting it, gettingit started. Well. So it's yeah,

(11:20):
last last time it was clogging andI haven't touched it since then.
But but yeah, so we're atat time of this recording, eleven weeks
or so out from from celebration,and I refuse to look at it in
days because that feels way too close. So eleven weeks feels amorphous enough to

(11:41):
be comforting. But now it's gonnabe good. It's gonna be a fun
time. As we're getting closer,we're getting more excited. We're finally getting
information and plans are being revealed internallyto a lot of the clubs, and
it's it's coming together. So I'mthe closer we get, the more I
think we're really it's really going tohappen, and it's going to be a
fun, fun time. It's momentslike this where you know, when they

(12:05):
announced that they were going to defercelebration, I just decided, you know
what, Like I didn't have anincome at the time, I'm gonna let
my tickets go and get my moneyback. And now I'm I'm having like
pre fomo, right, But Ithink the move might just be to go

(12:26):
and like people watch outside of theconvention center. Yeah, and there's a
chance I'll get an extra pass asan exhibitor. Now that we had to
march where we should be hearing inthe next couple of days, which if
any panels got picked up, SoI submitted for a panel and so we'll

(12:46):
see. So there's there's it's it'snever it's a it's not a guarantee but
there's things that there's possibilities out there, so definitely, I mean it would
be worth visiting for a day.I'll just call up Uncle George. Uncle
George sold it, Derek. Idon't know if you remember that. He's
still very close, that's true.But yeah, but as we're working on

(13:09):
stuff, and as we were comingup with an idea to talk about today,
Yeah, I just wanted us tokind of think about some of the
materials we like to use. Andyou know, we can use three D
printing obviously if we want to,but that's kind of you know, ambiguous
material at that. But yeah,in making plans for K TWOSO three point

(13:33):
zero, I really kind of havedoven that's not the right word. Have
dived back into EVA foam, whichI have not actually worked within a couple
of months. Since I've been workingon other things, mostly laser cut acrylic.
I've probably swapped out to acrylic asmy primary medium now. But you

(13:54):
know, I got a fresh canof Barge contact cement. I swear by
it. It works so well andit's amazing. You coded on one side,
coat it on the other side.Wait five minutes, let attack up
and boom, you have an instantbond that's really really strong. I did
one day I had a can.It was fortunately inside a gallon ziploc bag,

(14:18):
but it tipped inside my car whenI was going somewhere for like a
Droid build day or something. SoI lost most of a can of barge
once upon a time, and thatwas a sad day, because it's like
a court, it's like a it'sa good amountain right. I actually just
ran into this similar problem when Iwas working on the rubber stamp for all

(14:39):
of my boxes, and what endedup happening to me was that I'd never
really used a ton of barge overthe years, but I'd had it.
I feel like I watched an evilTed video or Punished Props video years ago
and went out and got some,and I'd used it for a variety of
things, mainly herring my sneakers.I mean, it is a shoe glue,

(15:03):
like it's it's original use. Andover the years of like opening and
closing and opening and closing, thethreads on the cap got full of contact
cement and so the can wasn't actuallyairtight. So when I went to open
it a couple months ago, theinside was just like a jello block of

(15:28):
rubber. Yeah, and I wasnot happy about that because there was quite
a bit still left in the container. So, you know, note to
future me, don't buy the largesize. Yeah. Yeah. Well unfortunately,
fortunately the at least the latest canI got, they actually improved on

(15:54):
the internal brush that comes in underthe cap. Normally it's a piece of
plastic that slotted in. It allalways falls out, it never and so
now the newest one I had,it's actually a piece of metal that comes
out of the cap that's one piece, like a folded piece of aluminum or
something, and with the bristles onthe end. So I'm like, okay,
well that's that was a problem thatsolves. So yeah, probably need

(16:18):
to get some more foam and othermaterials. But yeah, I'm working on
templating out the pieces I need andgetting as smooth you know. Seems I
don't want it to be visible thatit's put together from multiple pieces, and
I'm going to be trying to makehim out of a lot thinner material,

(16:38):
maybe too thin, but I thinkI'm hoping that will help reduce weight,
because you know, K two isan everywhere weight problem where there's not like
a piece that I can remove.It's little bits here and there all over
the place, But I think atthe end of it, there's there's internal
structure. There's like ribbing and thingsyou can do to add strength to the

(17:03):
shell. Even if the exterior foam. I'll probably go with like four mill
instead of like six or eight,which is thinner, but it'll still get
the job done. Yeah, AndI think the last time we talked about
this, you had mentioned even likeremoving some of the material from like the
PVC pipe, like putting holes slotsinto it. That wouldn't I just think

(17:26):
I'm still gonna go with PVC.I might go with It's funny, I
might go with a thicker PVC thathas holes in it. So right now
I'm using one inch PVC that's thethin wall. But I might do like
Schedule forty, which is a thickerwall, but drill holes in it,
because I think drilling holes in theregular thin PVC might compromise it too much.

(17:48):
But I could always wrap like tapearound it for strength, which tape
is light. Yeah, So Idon't know it. I'm not sure if
the cost of the weight saving arereally worth it. But I'm also thinking
do I want to move away fromPVC because he creaks like there's a lot
of give and play, and I'mlike, do I want that? I

(18:11):
mean, I like him having alittle bit of play. None of him
is glued together. He's all screwedand bolted. But you know, again,
it adds up, like a kneejoint and hip joint and everything.
It starts to eventually kind of creakaround as he's walking, and I'm like,
hmm, do I want that?I don't really mind it, but

(18:33):
but I don't really know why Iwould replace it with. PVC is such
a great versatile material. It's easyto buy and mass quantities, and all
of the joints I have for himare built for a one inch coupler,
so moving to something like again,it's also just weight. I mean,
PC is not that heavy overall,so maybe something like like twenty twenty extrusion

(19:00):
is nice, but even as aluminum, that's going to add up and probably
be heavier, which is not thedirection I want to go. Yeah,
yeah, I would be curious tofind out what kind of weight savings you
would get. Well, you know, I have my male scale and I
could prop so now I can actuallydo tests and just get like a one

(19:22):
foot piece and you know, havethe normal pipe, the schedule forty pipe
and then with holes and without holes. And then yeah, if I compute
what a foot what a board footkind of pipe is linear foot, and
then multiply that over how much Iactually use, that would give me a
rough estimate of weight. But yeah, again it's also just time and effort.

(19:48):
I mean, if I'm going tosave grams out of drilling all these
holes and then it's not worth thetime and effort and possible structural integrity compromise.
Yeah, yeah, Yeah, it'sone of those things. You know,
one inch pipe a lot more timeconsuming, smaller holes. It was
a larger diameter pipe, true,probably easier stability would definitely be a non

(20:19):
issue. I would think, youknow, if you were judicious about the
amount of material you were removing.But yeah, the one inch pipe is
that would be challenging. Yeah,And I mean I could also go to
a thinner pipe, go to downto like a three quarter inch if it's

(20:41):
just enough to hold the shape youknow, as a as a bone kind
of structure. But now you're makingadapters, and adapters have a lot of
weight in them. As well,So are you really you know, adding
a three quarter inch plus the adaptermight be the exact same weight as just
the one inch pipe. So it'sthis ways to figure it out. But

(21:04):
I can always make it out ofresin It's at least I know all of
it will be lighter than three Dprinting, because I know that that is
definitely not the way as far asweight, because that adds up really fast.
And the funny thing is, andI don't know this to be fact,
but my assumption would be that it'snot the actual three D print that's

(21:25):
the heavy part. It's all ofthe stuff that we have to do to
smooth it out to get it readyfor pains, right, Oh yeah,
like Bondo weighs a ton. Imean, I know even as a reprint,
my k twoso head is going tobe lighter this time around, because
the first time I did it,I was my first time using Bondo,
and I slathered it on like itwas and I was so upset because it

(21:48):
smoothed it, but it was probablylike an eighth of an inch of Bondo
over the entire thing at least,and it looked terrible, and I'm like,
oh, this is going to makeit so heavy. All this weight
and any infill and all sorts ofthings you can adjust, but yeah,
this will be We're gonna just gowith standing and filler primer, no bondo.

(22:11):
We don't, we don't need that. Yeah. Yeah, So then
it's safe to say that foam orat least PBC would be on your list
of favorite materials. Yeah, bothof those, but definitely foam. It's
it's very forgiving, it's malleable.It's cheap, you know, relatively cheap,

(22:33):
even if you don't buy it fromlike a causeplay supplier or even now
a lot of places like Michael's andJoanne's are starting to carry it in different
thicknesses and without diamond plating. Butyou could also just go if you need
a chunk of foam, just goto home depot and buy a pack of
floor mats and the same stuff.So and if you I think, actually

(22:56):
I think part of K two's bodywas that type of foam because I just
had the diamond plate side facing inwardbecause you weren't going to see it.
Um, But yeah, you neveryou never know. But yeah, it's
a great, a great material thatI feel like I haven't used in a
while. My last big foam projectwas probably actually I was going to say

(23:18):
L three, but after that Imade a Game of Thrones style chair,
and so I made like a hundredswords out of foam, just just just
really this is you know, goingto be for like a school play,
so really quick, um, sojust knocked out. It was a simple,

(23:40):
just really really fast nested design andthen just glued them all down into
like a layer and then just sprayedthe whole thing with prie with PLASTI dip
and hammered metal paint and it wasyou know, good enough from twenty feet
away. But yes, lots oflots of swords. I love the fact
that you just randomly have a sword. But I just happened to know there

(24:03):
was one right there. Yes,for visual aid, which is also sort
of funny to me, considering likeif you ask me to find something like
a tape measure in my shop,I'd be like, give me a second.
I think it was over here thelast time that I was using it.
Being a tape measure, stop itright in front of me or maybe

(24:26):
our six inch It just means Ihave a cluttered desk, Derek. That's
all It means it doesn't mean anythinggood. It's all bad, terrible.
What about you? What's a what'sa material you've enjoyed using for whatever reason?
So mine also, well one ofmine also is foam, but it

(24:48):
is not the same type of foamthat you like. I like XPS or
expanded polystyrene foam, the pinks stuffor depending on more of an insulation kind
of foam. Right, that isexactly original intent. Yeah. Um,
it's either pink or blue, dependingon what part of the country you live

(25:10):
in, and it's either made byhot and cold is insulate. No,
it's it's pink is for Owen's Corningbecause they have the pink panther as their
mascot, and the blue is forDoao, their competitor. Okay, I
think literally just chose a different colorfor the sake of choosing a different color.

(25:34):
Um. They're, you know,roughly the same product. They come
in different densities and whatnot and um. But yeah, they're they're designed to
be used for insulating walls of houses, which is why finding it in California
has become nearly impossible because our weatheris just not ever really cold enough to

(26:02):
need this degree of insulation used.It's always blown in or the rolling fiberglass
kind. But yeah, it's greatfor making tombstones and pedestals for larger monument

(26:22):
type pieces. The big brick columnsthat we have out in front of our
Halloween display are made of foam.I think of volume whenever I think of
that kind of foam, Like ifyou need to build something big that is
kind of expansive, yeah, youknow, and light, definitely light.

(26:44):
I most of the tombstones that I'vemade over the years have been two feet
tall by sixteen to eighteen inches wide, And the only reason that they were
that size was because it was sochallenging to get this foam and that was
the only way that you could breakout a sheet of foam into eight tombstones.

(27:10):
That was like the easy math ofit, all right, And so
I never really did anything particularly largewith sheets of foam, although I know
plenty of people who do. I'vealways sort of used it for smaller things
like that, or I've taken itand then cut it into pieces, like
smaller pieces to be used, likeif I needed to do brick work or

(27:36):
something like that, I would takea piece of two inch foam and cut
it into a brick sized piece andthen like I was cutting cheese on a
you know, a deli of thehot wire right through a hot wire,
and then you know, would havethat to use for fake brick. And
I've seen people three D defy itwhere they'll take like ten layers and sandwich

(28:00):
it together in a rough outline shapeand then go in and carve it into
like a literal sculpture, right,And that's a whole other level of prop
making. Yeah, which I actuallyhad the chance to do that for a
really I mean, I've only fastforwarded through the movie because it was definitely

(28:23):
not my cup of tea. ButI worked on Danzig movie that came out
last year and had to make thismassive sculpture of a animal with big horns
on it. I think we've talkedabout it on the one that went on
the door, and I kind ofthe aff and whatnot, and that's exactly

(28:47):
how I went about that. Itwas, I want to say it was
three or four sheets of foam thick. Didn't you have a like a statue
in your frontyard graveyard? Was thatmade out of foam or was that a
different type of material That one's acombination of things. So it's it's sort

(29:07):
of it's a cloaked figure sitting ontop of a pedestal in sort of a
crouched position. The pedestal that itsits on is made of two inch foam.
The crouched figure is like a combinationof things. It's PVC pipe for
its internal structure. It's chicken wireto give the body some shape, which

(29:33):
was then back filled with expanding foamto prevent it from collapsing just from you
know, being moved around over theyears and whatnot. And then expanding foam
was used to make the hands.I can't actually take any credit for this.
I made the pedestal. Missus VanOakes made the cloaked figure. She's

(30:00):
wonderful. That's stuff like that,and and it was very early on in
our dating that she said that shewanted to make something like that for the
Halloween display. And to this day, many years later, it's still quite
the head turner. Everybody asks aboutit because it's because it's life size.

(30:26):
People will stand in front of thefront of it and expect it to move,
and it's lit, you know,it's under lit. Yeah, it's
got a great paint job. Onit, so you know, we keep
threatening year after year that you know, if you come to the to the
house and you see all the decorationsand there's now two cloaked figures, one
of them might be a person,but now you know the foam. Honestly,

(30:52):
I would use either both the extrudedor expanded foam. The the extruded
foam I don't care for just becauseit's very messy, right, but it
is very easy to sculpt because it'sjust those little tiny grains of foam,

(31:21):
you know, So you could takea wire brush to it and carve it
like you were you know carving.You could as like a rasp or there's
many things you totally there's like thehorse hair brushes that work really well for
like doing bigger stuff, and it'sdefinitely versatile in that way. But if

(31:42):
you don't have a plan going intoit, you will be cleaning it up
for the rest of your life.Yeah, that's true. It's like the
opposite of Honey I shrunk the kids, where the foam would be to like
glitter, Like, once you getglitter out, it's everywhere, you're never
getting rid of it. This islike the scaled up honey, I enlarged

(32:07):
the foam or I enlarged the glittersituation for people that like to work in
foam. Yeah, and it's interestingbecause we definitely have to clarify when we
say foam because there are so manydifferent types. And like you said,
you know, XPS is very differentthan EVA foam, like very different.
Yeah, yeah, quite a bit. And it's different from expanding foam,

(32:30):
yeah, which is also on mylist of favorite materials. But yeah,
it definitely very different monsters, allof them. Yeah, and again,
one of the things I also likeabout EVA foam is just the tool cost.

(32:51):
It's it's a razor blade and maybeand maybe a sharpener or a pack
of blades because it does dull relativelyquickly. But I've also used bandsaw on
it. Like when I had tomake a larger three dimensional cylinder, I
just layered up a bunch of tenmil pieces and then just ran that through
because that's too thick to cut witha box cutter. And you can stand

(33:15):
it, you know, you canseal it, so you have to treat
it right, but it but again, you can get a giant sheet of
it for like ten dollars, whichis a very good, a very good
deal. I mean, last timeI checked prices it was around that.
So you never you never know,But yeah, I think I always feel
like EVA foam is kind of agraduation from cardboard. It has many of

(33:38):
the similar properties and how you treatit, I could say before it flexes
more and it joins seamless, moreseamless than cardboard. Yeah, so which
cardboard being the cheapest of cheap,although I've i have been able to do
some projects with cardboard where I've hadI've been able to actually purchase like big,

(34:00):
unfolded, virgin sheets of cardboard.And it's something so nice about cutting
something that doesn't have a box flapfold in it already. It's it's like
wow, it's like that, youknow, like the days you got to
play with the refrigerator box and you'venever seen a piece of cardboard so clean

(34:20):
and so big. Yeah, allright, well yeah that was my main
my main material. Anything else youwanted to add before we wrapped up tonight,
Well, I mean I definitely haveother materials that I you know,
that we can talk about. Giveme, give me another one. I

(34:44):
would be remiss if I didn't mentionMDF. Yes, oh yes. And
while I know that people have alove hate relationship with it myself, don't
don't build a deck out of it, don't build anything structural out of it.
Is not for that I will saythis for prototyping or non weight carrying

(35:08):
or low weight carrying things. Ithink it's so versatile. I mean,
if you can look beyond the factthat it's basically just sawdust and glue and
formaldehyde, it is very easy tosand. You can get it in a

(35:34):
variety of sizes. It cuts likebutter for the most partum lasers well lasers,
well, you know, the downsidebeing it doesn't get along with paint
so much, or I shouldn't saythat, it takes a bit more work
for it to get along with paint. But like man for just doing some

(36:01):
basic construction stuff where you just needa case for something, or like the
moving tombstones that we have in ourHalloween display. They're all built on mechanisms
that are attached to MDF and evenafter all of these years and being like

(36:23):
exposed to the dampness of October nightsand all the sort of stuff, and
like not really they're not sealed oranything. They're like you know, spray
painted, but they're still doing theirjob. And like I that to me
is sort of like the gateway drugto getting into different wood materials. It's

(36:47):
like, yeah, because most hardwarestores, you can't go in and buy
like a two by four section ofplywood, right, you know, they
have that like little rack that's sortof maybe two by four, but there's
it's not as choice. Yeah.Yeah, Well, nobody's gonna like cut

(37:10):
down some Radiata pine plywood and likeput it in the stack, like they
know that the value is in thosebig four foot by eight foot sheets.
Um. But you know, ifyou're like doing a small project, you
might be like a hobbyist. I'mnot really sure quite what you're doing.
You'll go into home depot down tothe Lumbard department, and you'll be like,

(37:34):
all right, well there's you know, there's half inch, there's three
quarter inch, there's eighth inch,there's or a quarter inch, like you
know, like it comes in avariety of thickness and in sizes that will
fit into like most subcompact cars.Yeah, and you know, for me
it was like, great, thiswill fit into the back of my civic

(37:59):
you know, to this day,I'm still like, how do I get
a sheet apply at home? Evenlike you said, for prototyping, like
especially that it, like we said, it laser as well. So if
you're rather than spending the time onacrylic, which is relatively expensive per square
foot, you know, you couldbust out three or four prototypes in eight

(38:21):
and GIMDF for a tenth of thecost. Yeah. Yeah, And honestly,
you know, there's definitely been sometimes where I've thought like, oh,
this would be better in acrylic,or this might be better in another
material, and then I kind ofgo, well, you know, like
maybe not. MDF is good.It's easy to work with, its sands

(38:44):
really nice. Like the negative thingsget very quickly outweighed by the positives.
But that is why it is onmy list of favorite materials. Well,
just like any material, it hasits place. I mean, if you
use it outside of its place,it's not going to perform as well.

(39:05):
And like you're sure, just likefoam, you have to steal it or
you're going to dump a gallon ofpain on it just to get it to
well, we all, I thinkwe can all agree that MDF is a
step above OSB. Oh for sure, that stuff's just garbage. But it's
oriented strandboard, which is just randomflakes of wood. It's oversized splinters glued

(39:32):
together into squares. Yeah, youwant to talk about not making anything structural,
stay away, do not do notmake anything out of that. If
a trisk it was the size ofa subcompact car, that's osp it would
have the structural integrity of a triskit. Yeah, exactly, No, Yeah,

(39:53):
no, I definitely would agree withMDF. It's it's also you know,
and you can get it. Imean it's head v at thicker quantities,
like you get like a three quarterinch piece of MDF, and it's
it's ways a lot, probably morethan plywood. I would say, oh
for sure. And one inch sheerlike, okay, this is now a

(40:13):
two person job to move this likecountertop piece, even though it's MDF.
It's it's you could hit it witha mallet and it's going to just sheer
off the you know, the corner. But yeah, no, it's definitely
a good good material. Um.Yeah, I think for my second material
round out with like I said before, kind of acrylic. Acrylics a really

(40:37):
interesting thing, you know, findingit at a reasonable prices sometimes tricky,
but the fact that it lays herso well, and uh cuts really cleanly,
sometimes too cleanly, like it's kindof it can be sharp if you
don't treat it nice. But Ilove that it comes in a variety of

(40:59):
colors, transparencies and madness, sosometimes you can get it where it's like
matt on both sides. And thisis usually castacrylic, so I don't know
exactly how it's made. I'm assumingit's rolled or poured into some sort of
mold and then which is why youget the glossy side on one side.
I'm not again, I'm not exactlysure, but I think you're right.

(41:21):
It's this is the feeling I getlike, and then it's cut to final
lengths. But yeah, it Imean, I make everything in my store
out of it, and it's Ilike to keep a little bit extra of
different colors on hand, just becauseit's fun to play with. It's fun
to prototype with and be like,Okay, you know I want to you
know, gill get an idea inyour head, like, oh, I

(41:44):
want to make an ornament or alittle display or or an etched clear piece
that I can underlight and it'll glowand yeah, just throw it on the
laser or if you even if youdon't have a laser, you can still
cut it. And as you know, just like with a variety of tools,
you may not get the preciseness thata laser could get you, but

(42:07):
it's still a fairly versatile tool.It's like a finishing material, you know,
it's not really for building up something, but that top layer, that
nice part of the box that youwant to look look good. Now,
I'm curious the because I haven't purchasedany of this type of material yet.

(42:30):
But like we were talking, beforewe started recording, you had kind of
a cast member ish kind of badge, which are usually like the two tone
kind of material where you can laserinto it and it reveals a different color.
Is that acrylic as well, oris that a different material that is
acrylic, but they apply a toplayer of a like foe brushed aluminum.

(43:00):
Got it? So basically it doesn'thave a shine. Yeah, it doesn't
have the luster of real metal,but it's you know, passable bad um.
I actually have one right here thatI'm looking at. It's, uh,
you know, it's definitely got agloss to it. You can see

(43:20):
the brush lines in it, umand then you're eating just eating away that
topped kind of veneer almost exactly,and then it exposes the acrylic beneath.
So okay, I was a feelingthat was acrylic, but I wasn't one
hundred percent sure because again I haven'tworked with it much. Yeah, this
is the same type of stuff likeyou would see, um, go to

(43:45):
any college campus any you know,Oh yeah, the science lab sign is
or name tags, and I'm surealmost every name tag that has an embossed
or you know, etched in nameon it is acrylic. Yeah. Yeah,
And they used to do it becauseI would remember going to like the

(44:08):
county fair with my grandparents and therewas always the guy that was there with
like a small C and C machineor router and was like making people signs
like, oh, this is theYoung's house whatever, same idea. They
were doing all those signs back inthe day using C and C and now

(44:30):
they've switched over to laser etching justbecause it's faster, more accurate, but
it's it's the same type of material. But you're right, it's a laminate
of one color and then another colorunderneath. Because I know the last time
I ordered some from Inventibles. Isaw that they also had green acrylic where

(44:53):
the under layer was white. Yeah. They have a lot of a lot
of mix and match options. Youcould have black with white under it,
or white with black under it,and a lot of different two tone kind
of design so yeah, and itusually you could also get it in like
sixteenth inch and eighth inch in differentthicknesses. So yeah, one of these

(45:15):
days I'll pick up a couple ofsheets just to play around with until I
have a project for it. Yeah, it's interesting stuff, I know,
you know, I I use itfor something very specific, and you know,
outside of that, I've used iton a few other little projects to
just sort of add that touch ofmetallic to something where like in the past

(45:38):
I may have used brushed aluminum likevinyl, right, you know, and
would like use that as an insert. Whereas you know, working on a
project for a client that has it'sa Star Wars sort of Empire themed control

(45:58):
panel that will have of multiple touchscreensand I think they're gonna power it with
our Dueno and all that sort ofstuff. But I'm just building the case
that it lives in. And Iwas able to use some of it to
just sort of add little touches ofsort of a metal look to something that
you know, I'm not gonna gohave some metal cutdown. You don't need

(46:22):
an actual metal just now. Imean, it would look awesome, but
considering what this is, I thinkthis is going to look great anyways.
But it's you know, nice tohave that option. Well, And I
did a project for a friend whoneeded some laser time and just taking advantage

(46:42):
of the masking. So I lasereda QR code onto a piece of acrylic
and then before removing the masking,sprayed it with white spray paint too,
so basically the same as the twotone, just without the two tone type
acrylic and worked worked pretty well.So you just got to make sure you

(47:04):
think about that before you take themasking off, because you can't put the
masking back on. It's sure can't. It's not going to work. So
no, I've been trying to figureout how I could go about doing that,
because there are definitely some parts ofthings that I make pretty regularly that
would benefit from having some masking done. But it's just it's too much of

(47:24):
a headache to try and figure itout. Yeah, I mean, there's
vinyl cutters and things like that tomake something you could apply, but there's
something about the fact that you canlaser off your own masking with a score
line. It's exactly where you needit to be. Yeah, it's it
opens up possibilities. Again, they'rejust different tools and different materials. You

(47:46):
can do all sorts of stuff withthem, that's right. We definitely love
that we do always new materials.But yeah, this was covering a couple
of our favorite materials that we enjoyusing and they or Yeah, there's a
lot of places you can get themfrom. We're always hunting for the best

(48:06):
deal to keep the cost down butstill get a quality and often it's what
you get what you pay for.So you definitely want to invest at least
a little bit into your materials.But yeah, but if you have a
favorite material, hit us up onthe nerdparty dot com. We have a
contact sheet you could reach out tous, or we also have the Maker's

(48:29):
Method Instagram account. You could respondto this episode when we post it,
and we'd love to hear of anymaterials that you use that you think are
staples of your making journey. ButDerek, if someone wanted to see what
was on your workbench or what yournext video was going to be. Where
would they find you? You canfind me every weekend, or at least

(48:51):
I try over on YouTube at vanOaks Props and also on Instagram during the
week, where I'm posting things whenI should be working on the weekly video.
What about you, Darren? Wherecan people find you? Now?
They can go to my website Doctorsci Fi dot com. Dr SciFi count

(49:12):
down eleven weeks to celebration. Ohboy, but again, thanks for listening
to us here on the Nerdparty network, where we have a variety of great
shows from sci fi to making tocosplay and all sorts of great content.
Go to the Nerdparty dot com tocheck out all of those and we hope
to hear you. We hope youwill hear us all next week here on

(49:37):
Maker's Method Keep making