Cutting foam.

[damduck-egg]

You could have a whole army of Marmite soldiers.

G.Harman

[Martin Brown]

Polystyrene gives off smelly styrene monomer which isn't great for you, but the fire retardants in PU foams when they decompose can produce phosphorous cage compounds which are better known as nerve agents.

It is for this reason that you should get out of a housefire with PU foam furniture burning PDQ. The smoke is also copious, black and with plenty of faster acting HCN and CO in it for good measure. I'd do it somewhere fairly well ventilated if you decide to use a hot wire to cut it.

I doubt if anyone has ever died from smoke inhalation cutting up bits of foam but plenty have from smoke in house fires.

I think a sharp scalpel and damp deep frozen foam is the best bet.

[The Natural Philosopher]

nah that doesn't work. Even hot wire cutters cool if you work them too fast. Its an art cutting with a hot wire bow.

[The Natural Philosopher]

You cant melt most PU foams for that reason. They char instead.

[Tim Watts]

That won't work - you'd not keep the wire hot.

However, the hot wire and car battery charger works. Ideally use nichrome (element) wire and a rheostat or suitable power resistor (trial and error this) to control the current - or a lab type adjustable PSU instead.

It does stink though :)

[polygonum]

AND I mis-typed without thinking. It is 5 GRAMS - or 5000 mg or

5,000,000 mcg - where the daily requirement is approximately 3 mcg for an adult male.

So get multiplying by 1000...

[John Walliker]

The yellow compressible foam used for noise protection earplugs is good for acoustic resonance damping at high frequencies. I have used small pieces in probe microphones. It can, with care, be trimmed with a very sharp scalpel blade.

John

[The Natural Philosopher]

If you cant do UTF8 and get µg, at least use ug

[polygonum]

Most UK medicines have mcg on their packaging and in their documentation

- and as that is the context in which I mostly use the unit, and was the context of my post, that is the abbreviation I shall use. Perfectly capable of doing UTF8 - but decided not to.

I entirely agree that in other contexts it would be non-standard. But medicine does several funny things. Another example is using a capital L for litre.

Another, which is highly prevalent in the USA, is using 0.025 mg rather than 25 mcg (I prefer always to avoid decimal points if reasonably practicable - and in that context, it is). And the use of grains in the USA which are sometimes "metric" 60 mg and other times "closer to how big grains used to be" 65 mg.

And the Summary of Product Characteristics for the ultra-huge dose B12 is here:

[harry]

The best way to cut soft foam is with an electric knife. So, off to the kitchen when SWMBO is not about.

[Andy Dingley]

Ask that bloke in Belgium / Holland who does the ring kits.