Monday, August 16, 2010

I LOVE being proved wrong... er...sometimes.

And this is one of those times.

As you know, I have had no luck at all with Fun Foam.  And, because my 67 year old body houses a 7 year old's personality, Fun Foam is one of my FAVORITE materials. It pained me to have to give up on being able to use it in my eCraft.

So, when I saw on eCraft's Facebook page a post from them saying they had actually tested it and obtained a clean cut, I was actually kind of disturbed.  (Hmmm.... I hope none of my relatives read THAT one!)   But, I digress....  back to the topic at hand.  My relative's diagnoses will just have to wait.

The reason why I was disturbed was because I had put a lot of effort into trying to get a clean cut in Fun Foam and had not been able to do so.  And, I believed that if my experience was typical, users were going to be misled by Craftwell's claim that it could be done.  So, I decided to make a video showing what I was seeing as I tried to cut Fun Foam and fire it off to Craftwell.  It was NOT a pretty video.

The email I got back was not an angry or even a defensive reply.  It was a genuinely puzzled attempt to understand how our two experiences were so totally different along with a promise to work with me to try to solve the problems.  They are even going to go out and search for the brand of Fun Foam I'd been trying to cut to see if that might account for the differences.

But, most importantly they showed me PROOF in the form of images that included a closeup of the edges they were able to achieve.  Normally finding out that one is wrong is a reason to mope.  But, not in this case.  It is the best news I could have possibly gotten with regards to my experience with Fun Foam.  What it means is that like Edison, I know a lot of settings that DON'T work with my machine in trying to cut Fun Foam.  But, unlike Edison, I now have the advantage of seeing that someone DID find the right settings and the right brand of material.  I now KNOW it can be done.

So, I am back on the case to try to repeat what they have accomplished.  It will take a bit of time because I need to get some new blades in first.  It is completely unfair to do with test without being able to use new blades and I've been very hard on my blades with things like chip board and plywood.  I want this to work.  And, I want this to be a completely fair test.

For one thing, they had used adhesive back foam.  I had not.  Yet, adhesive backed is exactly the kind of Fun Foam I was most interested in.  I'd avoided it because that bit of adhesive backing makes the Fun Foam a little thicker and I had made the mistake of assuming that it would be LESS likely to work, not more.

I am here to test for YOU.  But, I am not here to mislead you by missing something important.  So, I am VERY glad that Craftwell replied as they did with HELP and PROOF that it CAN BE DONE.  I'm very excited to be able to pick up the chase for Fun Foam one more time!  So, as soon as I can replenish my new blade supply we'll give it another try.  Nice going Craftwell.

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