How to Rubber Coat Laser Cut Plastic Parts

Or inhaling carcinogens for your craft

In previous post we have shown you How-To do all manner of things from form acrylic in a domestic oven to how to get a rusty metallic effect on plastic parts. The basic fundamentals of Ponoko alchemy.

A recent post on the 4Volt blog shows how to Rubber Coating Laser-cut Plastic Parts for the rubber feet of a Jansen Walker robot. He needed extra traction on the feet and decided to go with an off the shelf product called Plasti-Dip.

4Volt used three coats and dried the parts hanging up, the tricky part is hanging them without touching any other parts. The dip shrinks considerably after drying, it’s thicker then latex paint, but not by much. using three coats to build up a good base.
Drying time varies depending on temperature and humidity, with a skin forming on the container if you work to slowly.


Plasti Dip International invented and manufactured Plasti Dip®, a multi-purpose rubber coating, for the Do-It-Yourselfer. Although Plasti Dip® became well known as a tool handle coating; the Do-It-Yourselfer’s soon discovered hundreds of new application ideas with outstanding results. Today Plasti Dip® is used in the home and workplace like never before. For example, did you know that Plasti Dip® can be used in your Home and Garden; for Art & Craft projects; for Maintaining and Repairing Automobile, Marine and Sporting vehicles, parts and gear.

Here we have to insert a health warning.

I have used this product myself on a previous project and was initially mildly amused by the health warnings on the side of the container. However, after standing over the the dipped parts, blowing on them to accelerate the drying process, as my vision started to double and my knees went weak I started to reconsider the validity of the warnings…
The final results were fantastic and durable, but use with care..

via 4volt. Check out more of his projects on his site including the previously mentioned Jensen Walker and a design for a handy set of calipers.