Flexible Ear Savers - Rubber? Leather?

Use thinner acrylic. I found that 0.060 (1/16") was very good. Flexible but strong. Folks are also using 0.030 (1/32") as well - even thinner & more flexible.

BF Plastics, estreetplastics and even Graingers carries it.

How many do you need?

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I’m probably going to be making like 300+ I’m not sure. Are you sure about the thinner acrylic? Won’t it just shatter when it bends around the head? These masks are so small it would have to bend almost from ear to ear and again I refuse to do the heat gun thing for that many. XD

Yep. Made thousands of them before my GF died.

Want some? I can send you a hundred or two tomorrow to try.

I can’t afford shipping right now gotta save that all up for whatever material) but you have me insanely curious. Do you have a pic of them bending?

I’ll send them for free :slight_smile: I did 10,000 of them & shipped them all over the country for free. One more box is no biggie.

PM with your addy.

Be a good thing to try them - might want to make them longer (shouldn’t be too hard - just stretch the design). Any idea how long you’d want them?

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Lemme go measure my husbands head from where the elastic ends to the other end and thank you so much for your help :two_hearts:

9 and 6/8ths of an inch is my super rough estimate.

The thin acrylic as @jamesdhatch suggested is the way to go. It’s very bendable. And nice generosity too!:+1:

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i’ve been using these recently.

they’re very thin polycarbonate. they tend to cut dirty (polycarbonate does), so i’m wiping down my machine after each set of six mats. but it’s really flexible, cuts pretty quickly, and inexpensive.

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I’ll send some regular ones and take a shot at some longer ones (GF has cleared my machine for use so long as I update them with any more fails).

9 3/4 is really long - the standard earsaver is only 3 7/8". 9 3/4 is about the distance between my ears. Do the elastics on the masks not stretch any past the ears?

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Here’s a picture of the 1/16" bending in my hand.

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That bend is nice! Also yeah these masks… the elastic is just… it’s painfully short… I don’t know what they were thinking. If I managed to get my hand in the ear hole it would barely stretch around my wrist.

Oooo! I will be taking a look at this!

I made mine out of 1/16". It’s definitely much more flexible. They WILL snap (mine are a thinner design and they would have snapped at that curve radius above), so the length may end up being important. That said, I think it’s a much better material for comfort than 1/8".

i will just reiterate: it doesn’t burn cleanly. you’ll have a lot of white dust in your machine and will need to clean more often. i’ve actually got some masking on the inside of the door because it just coats that area and when i finally stop, i can just peel it off instead of having to clean that area. and you’ll need to wipe the earsavers when they come out. i drop a sheet at a time in a small container of windex, shake it up, and wipe them down when they come out. it’s not too bad, and since i’m cutting a sheet of 50 in 8ish mins (305/full), it’s still a little faster overall. but you do have some work to do.

but i still like them better despite my above warning.

I was making “flexis” from the scraps of the earsavers, but you could make the entire sheet of the half earsavers and tie those together at any distance. Here are some I tied close but the could be tied with any ribbon or line to fit each person,

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Is it hard to tie them together with the Rubber bands?

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Not really but several here freaked out a bit over my suggestion to use them.

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A 300-pack of the smaller walmart brand hair ties was $0.98.

I am just providing them loose - I leave masking on so the recipient can remove it themselves, then loop them together.

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