Recently we began searching for a source of Syntactic Foam rod stock for a production requirement. So far we have Googled ourselves silly without stumbling across anything promising. There appears to be many sources of sheet and shapes but rod stock appears to be quite scarce. Are we searching for something that doesn't exist? Are we searching with the proper terminology? All comments, ideas, and suggestions anyone would care to offer will be greatly appreciated. Thanks, K.
Syntactic Foam
Aug 11, 2004
6 Replies
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "syntactic foam" but so-called foam rope is readily available for sealing around window frames during construction. It is about 3/4" in diameter and will compress down to 1/8" without too much trouble. Try a builder's merchant if this sounds like what you need.
Syntactic Foam is a special kind of rigid foam that resists external pressure to many atmospheres. It's used in boatbuilding.
It comprises glass microballoons in a plastic matrix, e.g., epoxy.
I'm pretty sure you can still buy the microballoons in bulk from 3M. I'm not aware of a source for rod stock, but it can't be that difficult to mix and cast your own.
Thanks Guys. We are already mixing and casting very small pcs, but the tooling for the size of rodstock for this project is more costly than we wish to invest at this time. Appreciate your taking time to consider our question. K.
What pressure are you building to?
A few years ago we went light because we only operated down to about 30m, and the equipment was heavy enough that Syntactic Foam was an expensive luxury. I found a company in Oregon
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that shipped various weights of rigid polyurathane sheet. I recall that we were using the middle weight, and that they could manufacture for deeper if we wanted. It was great to work with, as it didn't dull tools at all.
Al...
K wrote:
Your post brought back fond memories for me - back when I worked on ocean engineering projects.
I'm not sure if they'll have a listing but how about:
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Please post again on this thread if you strike out and I'll dig deeper.
Can you say more about your application?
Good luck.
Jay
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