Talk Composites - The Forum for Advanced Composites

Plug from XPS or EPS?

http://www.talkcomposites.com/Topic40378.aspx

By FiveO - 1/24/2022 7:48:07 PM

Hi

I have small homemade CNC machine and I want to try machine it.
So this is my plan: mill foam, coat with epoxy, use 2-3 polyester primer coats, sand and polish. After that semi permanent release and tooling gelcoat and so on.

Choose XPS or EPS, what is more milling friendly, more rigid?
Can I use polyester primer over epoxy? I have read that polyester don't stick very well to epoxy?
By SleepingAwake - 1/26/2022 9:11:36 AM

FiveO - 1/24/2022 7:48:07 PM
Hi

I have small homemade CNC machine and I want to try machine it.
So this is my plan: mill foam, coat with epoxy, use 2-3 polyester primer coats, sand and polish. After that semi permanent release and tooling gelcoat and so on.

Choose XPS or EPS, what is more milling friendly, more rigid?
Can I use polyester primer over epoxy? I have read that polyester don't stick very well to epoxy?

I would consider using a tooling board instead. this is very easy to machine on a router (easier than XPS i would think even) and you don't need to deal with primers and fillers and all, so all in all its not much more expensive i would have said. also going to end up more precise.

If any of the two i would clearly choose XPS, but if it needs to be cheap i would make it from MDF, mill it like a half a mm oversized, soak it with two coats of epoxy resin, machine to final size, coat again with resin, sand and "polish". Make sure to coat all sides of the MDF in this case, so it absorbs humidity uniformely and doesn't go all banana on you.

hope this helps.