Dampning Material Idea - good, bad ?

Enclosures and acoustic damping to help quiet them.

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Anthrax
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Dampning Material Idea - good, bad ?

Post by Anthrax » Thu Mar 18, 2004 4:09 am

Hey, i was looking for some camping gear last weekend, and i perchaced myself a foam sleeping bag mat

http://www.thebackpackstore.com/foampad.html

would this work well as sound dampning/stoping for a computer case ? has any one tryed it yet ?

exxowire
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Post by exxowire » Thu Mar 18, 2004 9:08 am

You could try using the foampad.

I think Its quite wasteful to use any acoustic damping UNLESS you hear significant vibration, then your only EFFECTIVE choice is the AcoustiPack.

sthayashi
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Post by sthayashi » Thu Mar 18, 2004 9:22 am

It'll probably be a decent to good vibration dampener, but probably a lousy sound stopper. Camping foam (as well as a lot of other materials) will sometimes reflect sound, rather than absorb it. It'll absorb some, but it's not as good as other materials designed to do the job.

joecuba
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Post by joecuba » Thu Mar 18, 2004 9:49 am

that foam is hopeless for sound absorbtion. It's too lightweight and closed cell. Also, I don't know if that kind of foam is rated for use inside a computer case. Is it fireproof?

aphonos
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Post by aphonos » Thu Mar 18, 2004 5:57 pm

exxowire wrote:I think Its quite wasteful to use any acoustic damping UNLESS you hear significant vibration, then your only EFFECTIVE choice is the AcoustiPack.
This is not true.

1. There are other effective choices besides AcoustiPack.
2. There are 3 purposes for sound damping materials - vibration damping, sound absorption, sound deflection/blocking.

Although I will agree that case damping is probably near the end of your quieting efforts. Quiet components should come first.

Bluefront
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Post by Bluefront » Fri Mar 19, 2004 3:27 am

FWIW....I was looking around in the camping section of a Walmart, and I found a similar foam pad, slightly different from the one in the first link. It was a blue eggcrate-type material, with a second orange layer of denser foam. The blue eggcrate layer was open-cell and the orange layer was closed cell. The pad was rolled-up.....looked to be about 1 1/2" thick. I'll bet that thing would work well for sound dampening. $20 for a big sheet.

I seriously doubt anything inside a computer gets hot enough to catch any foam material on fire......

Anthrax
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Anthrax

Post by Anthrax » Fri Mar 19, 2004 4:27 am

Bluefront

that sounds perfect, i live in australia though, so i have to find a place that sells it here

PatrickBateman
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Post by PatrickBateman » Fri Mar 19, 2004 5:10 am

page 3266, under "sound absorbers" of the McMaster-Carr catalogue at McMaster.com has some adheasive-backed sound absorbing foam of various types and application designations.

I use the 1" skinned, adheasive-backed black foam on top of a vibration dampening layer. sandwiching the vibration dampener between 2 layers of the absorber is better still, but gets rather thick.

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