Foam, or something like it.

[faxing]

Gday all. Im looking for a dense, pourable foam, and within this foam, before it hardens, I have to make a perfect depression of an SLR camera. So when the foam hardens the camera can be dropped into its hole and not move even a little bit. Would foam be my best option here? And the camera cant be protected at all, so Imnot sure if its possible. Any help at all would be appreciated, even a pointer to the best place to ask this question.
cheers, tom

[tooltroll]

Hi Tom,

I can't think of any foam product you'd want to smush an unprotected SLR into. Not without it getting covered in goop and/or evolving into a paperweight.

This is for heavy duty transport? I have a bunch of mobile recording studio equipment that, of necessity, must be well protected during transport. The heavier stuff is rack mounted in a shock case, but smaller items are fit into holes in blocks of foam. Some odd shaped items I cut custom blocks for, working in layers of 3/4" heavy foam. A full piece on bottom, and then a lot of cutting, fitting, and trimming, layer by layer, until the case is full. Then gluing the layers together to form a block, and a top for the block.

Hope this helps.

[dexter]

I can envision wrapping certain things in plastic, setting it in a box, and using a minimal expansion foam that can be purchased at any hardware or home center. BUT, most foams "gas", so as ToolTroll said, I'm not sure that I would want experiment with a camera; too many things to go wrong. The first thing that I would try, is contacting the customer service department for the camera, just to see if they may have some original packages available. Otherwise, Troll's idea makes very good sense. Might take a little effort, but slicing out several thin pieces, then gluing them together, should achieve the result that you are looking for.

[faxing]

this is an idea I have for a camera housing. Most systems rely on anchoring the camera with the tripod screw, but i want to drop the camera into a fitted form so it doesnt move at all, and I thought foam would be my best option. Vacbagging the camera in thin plastic might make it possible, if a partial vacuum doesnt wreck it. Cutting foam sheets would work but would i imagine not fit the camera perfectly. Broken digital cameras can be had for not much so i can do a bit of testing. Id like to give it a shot even to just see how im wrong. Is low expansion foam fairly dense? Im looking for something thats as hard to push in as an orange skin, abouts. The camera ideally would be braced against this foam from behind and wouldnt move a mm.