Wednesday, October 29, 2014

About a substance called Sugru

Sugru is a highly useful and fun substance, sort of a combination of moldable rubber and glue. Amazingly it sticks to virtually any surface with chemical glue, including smooth metal or plastic.
It makes many repairs and fun ideas much easier to make. It's not cheap and it takes a day to cure, but it's still worth it. For example I have made grips for a couple of tablets and a camera, and they really help. (Sugru is not very grippy, sadly, so I had to invent a way to put grainyness in. Dabbling the surface with a toothbrush before it dries works pretty well though.)

There is a wealth of ideas on their site. Here is their newsletter.

Below is a grip I made with super-grippy surface. You can also see a strap I put on the tablet case with superglue. I think the strap is even better than a grip, actually, but they are both much better than nothing. I am amazed that four years after iPad One there are still almost no solutions for improving the grip on a tablet, and those that are there demands the whole hand behind the tablet, you can't have the thumb in front to change pages. With mine you can, making one-handed reading much more comfortable.
I cut the front of the case, since when folded back it gets in the way of the strap and grip. You can also put them directly on the device, I've done that with my Kindle Fire HDX.



I could not find a perma-link to this post, so I took a screenshot: 

(clickable)

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Update: 
I have written to the Sugru people with praise and one criticism. They claim that Sugru is heat insulating. I used 24 packs of Sugru on packing a thick ceramic coffee cup (you buy it in bags of 8 tiny packs). I hoped to keep my coffee hot longer. Even with a broad strip of bubble plastic inside it, it did not work. After a couple of minutes the surface of the Sugru gets quite hot. And of course it takes this heat from the coffee, so it gets cold as fast as normal, even with a preheated cup.
I don't like to complain, but I feel that I had wasted an hour and $50, so I felt it was false advertising. I don't think they did so on purpose or maliciously, for packing around a pot handle it probably does some good. And it is only a minor thing which does not take much away from this fun and useful product. 

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why not use a thermos?

Bruce W said...

My favorite product for bonding 2 things that I really really want to stay together is something called "J-B Weld." It is a 2 part epoxy resin mixed with steel particles. Works on metal, plastic, pvc, wood, concrete, ceramic, tile, fiberglass and lots of other things.

Don't know if it, or something similar, is available in Europe, so here is a link on US Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/J-B-Weld-Ounce-Tubes/dp/B00JU7HTA8/ref=sr_1_2?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1414689525&sr=1-2&keywords=jb+weld

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Thanks, Bruce. Yes, it's on Amazon.co.uk too.

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Anon: I have tried that. And it works well, temperature wise. But I make cappuccino on the compact Krups machine (makes it quick and with hardly any mess). And though I can't explain why, transferring that to a travel mug (I found Contigo was better than Thermos) somehow did not give the coffee joy that my favorite ceramic cup does. I don't think it changes the taste but... well.

Joe Dick said...

I bet it does change the taste. Beer tastes different in a metal gobblet vs a glass. I don't see why coffee wouldn't too.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

You may be right. I'm not the most fine-tuned in those areas.