Question about heat treating/sealing foam

[tahu505]

So I'm currently working on the chest piece for my first set of armor and I've already finished the front half. I don't have a heat gun yet so none of the foam pieces on the chest have been heated before being hot glued together. I'm worried that I messed up at this point because a lot of posts and videos that I'm now finding are saying that heat treating the foam is important for sealing and painting later on. Is there a good method for heat treating foam after it has been hot glued, or are there other methods for sealing and painting foam that don't need heat treatment?

 

[Sean Anwalt]

You will be fine to heat seal the parts after you glue them, just be careful not to let the heat stay on the glue very long. The foam seals very quickly, and it takes a second to melt the glue, so if you stay pretty quick you won't have a problem. Hopefully you used high temp hot glue.

You can see the difference in the foam when you seal it, so once it has sealed, you don't want to keep the heat on it, anyway.

I did a similar thing with parts of my suit, and it turned out fine. Just be careful.

 

[PaiganBoi]

Foam is very porous. Heat sealing closes these pores.
You can skip the heat seal step but, when priming the foam be prepared to use more primer. Foam that hasn't been heat sealed will soak up a lot of paint and it will take more coats to get a finish that you are satisfied with.

 

[LastMinute]

In my (limited) experience, heat sealing is helpful but not a must. Sealing of some kind before painting though is a must and there are a lot of different methods. On my Marine, DMR, and Pistol, I used the wood glue sealing method, but there's also stuff like plastidip, leakseal, Epsilon by Smooth-On, and Creature Cast Neoprene. I might try Creature Cast on my ODST build.

 

[PaiganBoi]

In my (limited) experience, heat sealing is helpful but not a must. Sealing of some kind before painting though is a must and there are a lot of different methods. On my Marine, DMR, and Pistol, I used the wood glue sealing method, but there's also stuff like plastidip, leakseal, Epsilon by Smooth-On, and Creature Cast Neoprene. I might try Creature Cast on my ODST build.

Creature Cast is a little on the pricey side. For a pint its $26 USD and for a gallon its $76. A can of Plasti Dip runs about $16.

 

[LastMinute]

Very true, the ability to sand down Creature Cast is a feature that makes me want to try it. The wood glue approach has been good results for me so far, and likely the cheapest as you can get 400ml for about $10CAD.

 

[tahu505]

You will be fine to heat seal the parts after you glue them, just be careful not to let the heat stay on the glue very long. The foam seals very quickly, and it takes a second to melt the glue, so if you stay pretty quick you won't have a problem. Hopefully you used high temp hot glue.

You can see the difference in the foam when you seal it, so once it has sealed, you don't want to keep the heat on it, anyway.

I did a similar thing with parts of my suit, and it turned out fine. Just be careful.

So I did not use high temp hot glue, I just used a regular small hot glue gun that I already had.

 

[phnix5888]

You should still be ok like the others have said just keep the heat moving the form will turn shiny when it's sealed as soon as that happens move on to the next section. And if anything does happen to come loose heat the glue to it's working state maybe add a little more and sick your seam back together. That's one of the advantages of hot glue it can be reheated and adjusted and is easily repaired.