Materials and suppliers

Thanks @marmak3261. I was hoping to find a commercial supplier that would have odd-sized drops for sale. Hopefully a large one with lots of drops that sells cheap to get rid of them. I think that Inventables sells only specific sizes. They do have a wide range of material types, though.

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You cleared them out eh? Nice! :smiley:

I could see glass shops having leftover acrylic that theyā€™d let go, especially if you were willing to give them money in exchange. Iā€™d guess theyā€™d mostly have clear, but thatā€™s also prolly the most popular lack-of-color.

ā€¦ editā€¦
Iā€™ve been avoiding this thread because itā€™s so long (I read too slowly to visit every topic), but, DANG!, it looks like youā€™re scoring big olā€™ piles of material left and right! Cool!

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Woo hoo - finally stopped by the Port Plastics in Tucson. I went inside to ask if they sell the scraps - they said yep - $1 pound then he took me out back. They had,behind the warehouse about 10-20 refrigerator sized boxes about 5 ft tall filled with acrylic pieces - some were formed pieces - not good for my purposes, but some boxes were filled overflowing(as in- I stood on pallets to pull pieces from the top that were eye level with me -although thatā€™s only about 5 ft - Dan may have had to reach down) with cast clear, bronze, opaque acrylic and polycarbonite. I mean several tons easily. I just grabbed a several pieces - 15 pounds worth. Now when I say pieces, my 2 biggest pieces were 16x33 inches and 12x 36 inches. My smallest piece was 18 x 11 inches ( yes inches not cm !!) plus several more pieces in between. He said they do get colored acrylic pieces in sometimes ( actually there may have been in some of those boxes - I went in the morning but had to hurry home and get ready for work, so only stopped in for 5-10 minutes).
Next time Iā€™m taking a couple big blue Ikea shopping bags and dig through some of the stacks. I only picked up 1/8 to 3/16 (one piece may be1/4) but they had larger pieces - like half and more thickness. I got some bronze/tinted, clear, white and opaque pieces. Good Friday !! :+1:

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Wow! Thatā€™s really cool. Around here all I get is mat board offcuts from the local framing shop.

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@emacartoon - I saw you mentioned Johnson Plastics a couple times in this thread. Are you happy with them as far as prices, availability, and service? Iā€™m about to buy a dye sublimation printer and they are one of the two closest vendors (their New York warehouse) that carry the equipment Iā€™m looking at. And itā€™s a plus that they sell laser engraving consumables. Would you recommend Johnson Plastics as a primary vendor? Thanks!

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Yes, absolutely. I use them as my primary vendor here in Phoenix for as much as I can. Theyā€™ve never messed up on my ordersā€¦ Which I canā€™t even say about some of the other vendors here where I have physically handed them the piece of cast acrylic I would like cut and got back extruded.

Their prices and materials are superior to Instructablesā€™s, although they have begun a partnership with them on some of the other materials.

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http://www.boulterplywood.com/ for people in new England that donā€™t mind a drive, they also do ship to all of US and will cut it down to 12x20 for the 4x8 sheets

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Ohhh My!!! That is right next to me!

Iā€™m going to need to see if they have a scrap/drop bin!

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Oh wow, thatā€™s close since I work in Bostonā€¦ Thanks for sharing!

if you do go can you let me know if the bamboo is solid or if its a vanier on a core
Please

Me too. Iā€™m looking for good bamboo.

ya I figure 195 for 4x8 will yield 16 12x20 so thatā€™s 12$ a blank for the gfā€¦ Inventables is 3x that cost

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I installed a bamboo floor in the kitchen, 5\8" x 4" x4ā€™ plank.
Donā€™t remember the sq.ft. in a box, but it was like $30/box.

It is solid, laminated 2 ply. Because of the thin wall thickness of bamboo, you wonā€™t find anything in excess of 1\4" that isnā€™t laminated.

yes correct I have a bamboo kitchen floor, however some of my designs are larger then the flooring planks will accommodate by a long shot. and i know it is a composite material it is fine I just want to know if the core is junk wood or more bamboo, my floor is more bamboo (4 layers of it)

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I picked some bamboo flooring up at Costco a few years back. Good price, but it reeked of formaldehyde and other nasty crapā€¦stored it for a few years to outgasā€¦and now need to figure out where to use it. If Iā€™m lucky it will fit the feed through on the gf.

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it wont fit the gf pass through is only 3/8 and most flooring exceeds that. best bet is to chop it down to 20ā€™s. ya the next thing I need to do is figure out who is making anything with safe adhesives for the animals to chew. more then likely I may and up just having to find solid woods of large enough size to work with that are also safe for animals to chew

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Thatā€™s a great find! Your location has a much greater supply of scraps than ours.

What a great idea and thanks for creating this resource :nerd_face:

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WooHoo - took the day off work to drive up to Phoenix and look at supplies ! Ended up going to Johnson Plastics which had Laserbits rep/supplier on site as well, Professional Plastics, Outwater Plastics (got some LED standoffs for acrylic!) and some lumber yards. Then after quick stop at a Disney outlet store stopped at IKEA and bought some nice wooden cutting boards (they have inexpensive bamboo ones as well) , some good scrap cardboard and MDF for free. What a great start to the 4 day weekend! So now i have more acrylics ( and Romark glow in the dark laserable sheet) and now just need the Glowforgeā€¦ May play with the K40 on some stuff but that thing is so inconsistent (possibly user error contributing) so Iā€™ll keep stacking and waitingā€¦

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72 shot glasses from bulkbarproducts.com - Iā€™m going to sandblast them with stencils cut on my vinyl cutter for now but I made sure they will fit in the Glowforge for direct engraving.

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