Need Material advice

[nomi]

I have a potential job doing some carvings for ceiling tiles.

They need to mimic the old "pressed paper" look of tiles.

I thought of signfoam, but that is way too expensive for this project (7500 sq feet is needed).

What would you guys use? Pink insulation came to mind, is there something else that might work well?

- Noel

[Brady Watson]

MDF is cheap, carves well & can be finished to look like anything. Since it is a ceiling, go for the ultralight variant, sometimes called LDF.

-B

[bruce_taylor]

Cut out a model then use a vac/thermalform process and make them out of plastics. Many of these available on the market today.
Cheap and looks good just like the tin of yesturyear.
Good Luck
Bruce

[gene]

There are companies that sell the tiles unless you have to have a certain pattern . Try outwater plastics .com can you post photos of what the tiles should look like finished?

[bcondon]

For grounding of PVC pipe. I simply lay a bare grounding wire inside the entire length of the
pipe, from dust collector to the end.

At the dust collector, I drilled a small wire through the pipe for the wire to pop out to ground.

I ran the system for a while without grounding also without issue. There are several articles I read that said that grounding of PVC is an emotional issue and that you can not build enough static electricity to ignite the dust.

Most of the fires are because you ran the tool through a metal object. (screw) which created a spark which caused the fire and not static electricity

[jseiler]

How big are the tiles to be? There are some small vacuum formers available and some DIY kits types that could handle relatively small ones. I built a small vacuum former for fun and it worked suprisingly well. I followed this as a template.

http://www.halloweenfear.com/vacuumformintro.html

John

[jseiler]

Also found this and it should work for some pretty large tiles.

http://www.make-digital.com/make/vol11/?pg=109

[woodworx]

We have a product at my work called plum creek. It is a super refined mdf. great for face milling or mdf fluted columns. It won't give you the fuzzies like normal or ultralite mdf.

[shoeshine]

what kind of price range compared to standard mdf?

[nomi]

I'll have to take a look at the Plum Creek, looks like several places around here carry it.

MDF would be my choice if light enough. Formed plastic would be a possibility.

- Noel