Ad Thermoplast

A guy who goes by the name of cr0sh on the Arduino Forums, who has been giving me all kinds of interesting suggestions, wrote a comment on thermoplastics. I will just copy paste it over here, in case anyone who has been following what I am doing is interested.

Personally, while the stuff *is* amazing, I am quite happy to announce, that it no longer is the main structural component of my set up.

Anyway, here goes chr0sh's post:

I noticed you are moving to customized forms using thermoplastic (Turbocast from Streifeneder, Apolit from Minke Props).

Whether or not it will help you (though it might help others, so you might want to reference it on your blog?), such plastic is known by a couple of different names in English:

"PolyMorph"
"Friendly Plastic"
http://www.instamorph.com/
http://shapelock.com/
...among others - its chemical name is:

Polycaprolactone (PCL) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycaprolactone

One place I found that sells "bulk" (not sure if "to the public", though) is:

http://www.absorbables.com/standard.htm

They also have "sample kits". You can also find this plastic on Ebay quite often, typically sold as plastic for jewelry making; it comes in a wide variety of colors (including metallics). Standard forms I have seen (before seeing your samples), have been a flat "stick" form, and pellets.

In the US, I have seen it sold in craft stores, and the friendly plastic is available from Target stores.

By the way, cr0sh has a website: phoenixgarage.org check it out :-)