Microtools Light Seal Foam

[illumiquest]

I've purchased from these guys in the past and they've sent out nice open cell foam which looks very much like what came with most cameras. I just put in another order last week and got four sheets in. Much to my disappointment the foam they sent is closed cell and definitely not oem spec stuff.

You could probably get away with using it but I suspect over the long term it would cause damage. At least if used as a mirror bump in an SLR where the heavier foam would stress the hinge every time the shutter is fired.

Not sure where to recommend ordering now, the fellow who used to sell full sheets on ebay has stopped. Any suggestions of where to get some new foam would be great.

 

[Leigh B]

McMaster-Carr Supply Company has a good selection of foam (and everything else).

www.mcmaster.com

- Leigh

 

[Smudger]

Try " Aki-Asahi " Excellent product and service..

 

[paul ron]

did you call or contact microtools? they sell 2 versions of foam.

return it.

 

[btaylor]

What about Jon Goodman (a member here)?

 

[EdColorado]

Yes, I'd recommend Jon Goodman. Great stuff, great guy.

 

[MattKing]

I expect that the OP has run up against Jon Goodman's relatively recent change of policy - he no longer sells the foam by the sheet. As I understand it, he changed his approach due to the people on eBay who were pirating his custom instructions.

 

[Leigh B]

McMaster-Carr has wear-resistant open-cell foam on catalog page 3616.
Enter that number in the Catalog Page box at upper left. www.mcmaster.com

Scroll down the page to:
"Wear-Resistant Quick-Recovery Polyurethane Foam Sheets and Strips"

The "medium" density is available in 1/16" thickness, both with and without adhesive backing.
Other densities start at 1/8" thick, which may be too thick for a camera.

The non-adhesive type is available in 12"x12" sheets without adhesive for about $7.

- Leigh

 

[illumiquest]

Thanks for the suggestions, I did order a kit from Jon but frequently repair older cameras and would rather just cut it myself. (because I'm cheap)

 

[paul ron]

I know just how you

Thanks for the suggestions, I did order a kit from Jon but frequently repair older cameras and would rather just cut it myself. (because I'm cheap)

I know just how you feel. I have been repairing cameras for a very long time and it seems materials are getting harder n harder to find in small bulk form.. just DIY kits.

Just another reason Im not doing anymore repairs.

 

[Jon Goodman]

I expect that the OP has run up against Jon Goodman's relatively recent change of policy - he no longer sells the foam by the sheet. As I understand it, he changed his approach due to the people on eBay who were pirating his custom instructions.

Thanks guys. Thanks very much for your support over the years. The piracy, copyright infringement and outright dishonesty displayed by the various parasites was a problem. And these people are as hard to get rid of as cockroaches. You'll notice I never removed the free instructions I had posted on the KYPhoto site, however. They're still there for people to freely stea...umm, use.

Another foam problem not many understand was caused by the tsunami. We all saw the horrible damage, but changes followed. Reconstruction took time and this gave some a chance to repurpose themselves. This means today they could be making anything...vinyl purses, rubber shoes, wetsuits, drink can koozies, weird hats to wear at sports games, other things but not sheets of foam. So today prices in the custom foam market have skyrocketed as suppliers are fewer and large buyers (think Toyota, Honda, Boeing, GM, Ford) get favor. If you want proof of this, go out and buy a low to mid-priced sofa. Take it home and open the zipper on one of the cushions. You will probably see what looks like bits and pieces and odd-shaped hunks of assorted foams packed into what resembles a cheesecloth sack. In a year you'll be trying to figure out how to re-distribute those bits and hunks so your cushion looks good again or you'll be out buying another and more costly sofa. Go to Jo-Ann's and price slabs of foam to use in upholstery work. Here...I'll save you the trip. http://tinyurl.com/y9jhzrzj This previously was about $6. On the tree of foam, this is pretty low grade. I used to sell kits for $6 that would allow the user to re-seal 6 35mm cameras. Today that kit would have to be priced at $50 or more. I am certain Curt (MicroTools) can no longer get open-celled foam of the type he wants or like me he's found it and it is too expensive. The days of being able to sell a high-grade custom camera foam in sheets are over. Please don't get me wrong. You can go out and find some cheap junk foam to use. It isn't good to begin with, would never have been used by a camera repairman and is it really what you want to put into a precise instrument? To me it is like going in for a vasectomy and seeing a bleary-eyed doctor with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth wiping off a pair of rusty garden shears with an old rag and a bottle of whisky. I have been working since the beginning of the year with companies in America to create for me a foam which will mimic what I've been using, but it has been a tedious, time wasting and very expensive process with lots of disappointments, dead ends and setbacks. The volume I'm talking about is small potatoes. Well, no. That isn't right. It doesn't even qualify as a single potato in their world. Much more like a lima bean. The foam I want can be had but once again the price is crazy (as an example one company quoted me $72 per square foot for one specialty foam...please let me repeat...$72 per square foot for 1.5mm foam without adhesive). Even though it was nice stuff, there is absolutely no way to go anywhere good with a cost basis like that. I can't do it, Curt Fargo can't do it...nobody can. But even though it has devolved from a pizza and beer fund to a pizza or beer fund, the "light seal project" will continue. I'll keep you posted. I have already secured mirror damper foam which is very nice and am working continuously on the rest. And I still have plenty of foam to make kits until the time US alternatives come through with a solution.

Note: if you need a bit of foam to use as a mirror damper please contact me. I've probably given away as much foam as I've sold over the years and I'll do my best to help you, too. I have a little ELE foam left here in a couple of thicknesses which makes a great mirror damper, looks exactly like the original and should last for decades. In fact, I use this for the inner damper of the RB67 and have done so for years. Please don't use any of the thick heavy junk foam out there. The original poster is right. It is totally wrong for your camera and will ruin your mirror linkage.
Jon

 

[paul ron]

Jon nice to see you here. Ive given up finding replacements and have just enough of the black gold for my personal cameras.

I had no idea what caused the shortage of material. Curt made his assorted and sheets smaller n smaller. I wonder if hes even selling open cell anymore? One order I got was neoprene foam and when I complained he just blew me off as ordering the wrong stuff... now I realize that was about the time of the floods and he must have been all out. Well that was the last time I bough any foam.

Yeah I agree about the cheap stuff I see so many DIYers using and have always bit my tongue when I saw those recommendations since they'd rip me a new one. not many people realize the differences. You don't service your Lamborghini at the corner gas station.

nice to see you around again.

 

[Jon Goodman]

Thanks much Paul,
For the past 2 or 3 years we've been remodeling/repairing the house we've had for 30+ years and hence the absence from APUG. A few years ago Curt sent me an email telling me he could no longer get the foam he had been selling and that he only had enough for about a year of sales. I knew what was wrong because a friend living in Japan had told me already. The company he had been dealing with shut their doors, but it was pre-tsunami. There has been no correspondence with him since then, but I have to suspect he's just hunting for something affordable to offer people.

Exactly like taking your Lamborghini down to the Gulf station to have Goober tune it up.
Jon

 

[klownshed]

Exactly like taking your Lamborghini down to the Gulf station to have Goober tune it up

That's very true. I've purchased kits from you in the past to re-fit my camera and am thankful that you supplied such good kits, making me a bit more Guberini than Goober when it came to the servicing of my Lamborghini OM-2.

But what should we do when we have a Lada, not Lambo? The good kits are now either too expensive or unavailable and is appears to now be a case of use 'junk' foam or nothing.

When the mirror damper foam has perished, is it best to keep using the camera as it is, swap out the bad foam for junk or just stop using the camera entirely?

EDIT: I've just noticed from one of your previous posts that you have now secured mirror damper foam. But the question remains for the light seal foam for cheap old cameras; what should we do? Stop using them? Use 'junk' foam as a stop gap until/if good foam becomes available again? Use without re-sealing and put up with light leaks?

Not every camera is a Lamborghini. ;-)

 

[Jon Goodman]

Well, the foam saga (nightmare?) continues. I just learned the door foam I've had produced came out completely unlike the sample, so it is back to the drawing board for me minus even more $$$ in my pocket. One thickness of the mirror damper foam had to be run again, also. As I may have mentioned, the problems are at least twofold: (1) I've become even a smaller buyer than I was in the past. Today I could be thought of as the Rodney Dangerfield of the foam world. (2) The foam companies are trying to find work/business but nearly always on their terms and they aren't content unless they can hit a home run every time they bat. It is quite like finding a person in Death Valley dying of thirst and when you offer them your canteen full of water hearing them say "I wanted a cold Stella Artois, a snow cone and some ice cream. I'll wait until somebody better comes along." If I posted a list of the foam companies who simply don't answer email messages nor return phone calls, I think you'd be both surprised and shocked they're still in business at all. You may have noticed Amazon bought Whole Foods recently. You may also have heard the Whole Foods CEO telling people "we focused on the employees and forgot about the customers." Amazon on the other hand focuses entirely on their customers and then thinks about their company second. I believe the Whole Foods employees may be in for a surprise or two.

I've said it before, but I'll repeat: If you need foam, please contact me and I'll see what I can do. I can't promise anything but I will try to help if I can. Please avoid using the crap being sold as camera foam. As for cameras which are not popular any longer or "cheap old cameras", please note: I've always tried to offer foam to repair as many makes and models as possible, but sometimes it isn't easy. Sometimes it feels like starting a company to make dodo bird food or tuxedos for cave men. A number of kits have been discontinued for cameras which either (a) nobody or (b) in optimistic terms very few people in the entire world are still using. It doesn't mean I can't make them any longer, but it does mean I must charge more because so much stuff has had to be put in storage and it is quite a chore to get the stuff and make one kit for one model. Discontinued kits include: all Bronica cameras, most Ricoh cameras, all Chinons, all Fujicas, the Fuji 690 cameras, a few Yashica models, Minolta Autocords (remember when I was begging people on APUG to buy those kits and offering them at $4 each?), Leica R4, R5, R6 and a few others.

So that's pretty much it for right now. Hopefully I'll have more optimistic news soon.
Jon

 

[Jerevan]

"tuxedos for cave men" ...

Too bad Jon that the foam business is so (pardon the pun) hard. I heard somewhere off in the distant past that you had quit the business. Thus I did not bother to track you down. But luckily I remembered you and figured I couldn't hurt to pop off an email when a friend of mine needed foam for a Bronica SQ-A.

The Mamiya C3 says hello.

 

[richardHaw]

https://www.amazon.com/Camera-Light...srs=9242722011&ie=UTF8&qid=1498441134&sr=8-13

This is "Japan Hobby Tools", he is my supplier and the owner is a great guy to correspond to. he is not the cheapest but his products are great. his foam comes in the appropriate thicknesses like 1mm, 1.5mm, 2mm and they also come in adhesive-backed or plain.

If you really want to save money, the foam on some older types of mouse pads can be used but that is going too as far as cheapness goes.

Asahi Aki is also one of my suppliers, you can also contact him. He sells the foam cut in 1mm strips,too. that will save you some time.

for light seals inside a ridge, I would use plain foam for that and for mirror dampers and smaller seals, the adhesive-backed ones are very convenient.

https://richardhaw.com/2017/04/09/repair-camera-foam-seals/

the link above shows pictures of the open-cell foam that they sell. in this case, the plain one.