A little advice for a begginer

Hi all,

I am fairly new to the notion of using foam to build but I have decided to give it a go. I have used Pepakura before to make paper and resin builds but I am having trouble with the foam PDOs.

When I open the file they still have all the little cuts and lines that I would use when using paper to achieve the curves, do you just ignore these when using foam, as its flexible and can be bent under heat instead of gluing the seams together and just straight edge them? Obviously if you do the size would be wrong which makes me think that's not the correct way. I assumed when downloading the foam files they would be less cuts and folds and there would be less pieces to mask because of the flexibility of foam.

I tried the basic Captain America build and encountered this problem using 10mm foam and it would look a mess if I started gluing seams together that were not needed in the first place. I was expecting just 3 pieces to cut out to bend and glue but there are tens of cuts to glue.

Basically I am asking do you follow the PDOs exactly or do you need to fix them together with tape before stencilling or do you use a bit or artistic license to get the correct stencil? Or should I be looking for dedicated foam blue prints instead of foam PDO files?

Thanks for any help its much appreciated, I hope this made sense!

Mark

If it's a file that's already been converted to foam then you cut it out just as it is, with all the seams and stuff. Even though foam does bend, there's no way you'll make certain compound shapes out of it, especially when you get into stuff like a helmet. If it has tabs for paper then it likely hasn't been converted and you'll probably have to watch a Youtube video if you want to do that yourself. But yes, make all the cuts. Trust me, you'll need them.

-Rog

Also keep an eye out for bevelled cuts.

Thanks.

What do I need to be aware of with the beveled cuts?