Stamps from craft foam.

Craft foam is a great material for your home made stamps. It can be easily cut and shaped to make stamps. I wanted to make stamps for my wife who is into scrapbooking and it would be nice with custom stamps. I have previously made a small laser cutter and used this as the cutting tool. But I wanted to make this instructable easy for everyone to replicate without any special tools.

Step 1 Gather the materials.

You don't need a lot of material for this and just some basic tools. If you want you can use a computer to design your pattern and then of course you will need a computer and printer as well.

Material:
Craft foam - I use 1/16" thick.
Masonite - Backing of old picture frames can be a good source.
A handle - Ordinary knobs from a cabinet door works well.
Countersunk screw for the knob (optional).

Tools:
Sharp knife.
Scissors
Straightedge
Super glue
Drill
Pocket laser engraver (Optional) ;)

Comments

[elabz]

I've done some stamps with a 200mW red laser cutter but I did it a bit different. If you use a foam with sticky backing, you can cut more detailed stamps (for example, those with text messages) because you don't have to transfer every little detail onto the backing.

Also, as a (yet untried) idea - what I'm hoping to do one day is to use sticky-backed foam, make the cuts for the shapes and then use the same laser to melt away those parts that supposed to be removed instead of removing them with an x-acto knife. Problem with removing parts of the stamp with a knife is that the sticky back holds too well. Some of the parts just don't want to go and it is really difficult to deal with smaller parts.

For this particular technique I'm waiting for a bunch of broken DVD-RW drives I bought on eBay to come in so I can build one of your pocket engravers (although my implementation will include direct drive from EMC2 software via a ready-made $20 3-motor bipolar stepper controller, I'll describe it better when I complete it).  Right now I have the laser mounted on an actual CNC router and it's too heavy a piece of machinery to make it laser off what will basically become a raster image. Your cutter/engraver should be much more agile  and, frankly, considering that it's built from discarded parts, I would not worry much if it breaks after a few hours of use, I'll just replace the motors with ones from another disassembled DVD-RW :)

Oh, and another thing, Groover, I see you've entered this one into the MakerBot Challenge, just wanted to mention that I've seen a design on the Net that uses discarded CD/DVD drives for a 3D printer! Well, as we're painfully aware, the size limitations are still 1.5" x 1.5" x 1.5" but it should be enough to get someone familiar with 3D printing techniques. You got me hooked onto these little DVD-based projects, makes my head spin when I think about many possibilities to use them ! :)

I'll be sure to vote for this one, too, hope you win the 3D one as well.

Cheers!

[Groover]

I'm working on a way to engrave raster images. It's not going great at the moment. But it could be used for stamps if I ever get it to work.

Now you got me thinking of 3D printing... :)

It shouldn't be to hard to do with an old glue gun with a modified temp control, some kind of controlled feeder and a way to move the Z axis. When the laser normally turns on it could turn on the feeder. Using some kind of plastic straw much like the MakerBot. The more I think of it the more I think it could work. Again, with a very small workspace.

[eross-1]

Cool. I will be trying this soon!

[scoochmaroo]

Fantastic! I wonder if our laser cutter will cut this stuff. . .

[Groover]

I cut it with a 200mW red laser. If you have a commercial laser cutter you might be able to cut it with low power and high speed.

[RaisedByRobots]

I knew there had to be a good use for this stuff. excellent idea!