ForMatter/Materials/polymer

Polymer

27 entries.

ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene) The Lego brick plastic. Tough, slightly matte, scratches don't show, glues with cement. The default for prototype enclosures, automotive trim, and any consumer
ASA (Acrylonitrile Styrene Acrylate)buy What ABS would be if it could survive sun exposure. ASA is structurally similar to ABS — same acrylonitrile and styrene comonomers, but the third monomer is acr
Clear Photopolymer Resin (UV-cure SLA / DLP / MSLA)buy The clear, glassy plastic of every SLA, DLP, or MSLA 3D-printed part. A photopolymer is a liquid resin that hardens when hit with UV light at ~405 nm. The print
EVA Foam (Footwear Midsole / Crocs Croslite-Family)buy The foam every running-shoe midsole is made of, every Crocs shoe is made of, every yoga mat in the studio is made of, every cosplay armor piece is built up from
Expanded Polystyrene Foam (EPS) White, light, squeaky when rubbed. The foam every fragile shipped object arrives in. In the model shop it's the cheap block you cut with a hot wire to mock up a
Extruded Polystyrene Foam (XPS) The pink (or blue) board every architecture school stocks for site models. Extruded as one continuous closed-cell loaf, denser and less crumbly than EPS, sands
High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE)voice The polyethylene milk jugs, detergent bottles, traffic bollards, drinking-water pipes, kayaks, and outdoor playground equipment are made of. Cheap, tough, chemi
Natural Rubber (vulcanized) Sap of the Pará rubber tree, tapped, smoked, and cooked with sulfur until it remembers its shape. Stretches and snaps back like nothing else cheap. Tires, erase
Neoprene Rubber (Polychloroprene Solid Sheet / Gasket Grade)buy The black or gray rubber of every gasket, every weather-strip, every wetsuit foam (the foamed version is in the textile library), every hose, every electrical-i
PEEK (Unfilled) The polymer engineering ranks among metals — the one that holds its strength to 250 °C, survives radiation that would degrade nearly any other polymer, and is b
PEI (Polyetherimide, Ultem)buy The transparent amber-colored high-temperature plastic of every aerospace cabin air-duct, every medical autoclave-sterilizable instrument, every high-temperatur
PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate, Clear Bottle Grade)voicebuy The plastic of every clear water bottle, every soda bottle, every clamshell food package, every blister pack, every Mylar Christmas balloon. PET is a thermoplas
PETG (Glycol-Modified PET) The clear plastic of soft-drink bottles, blister packs, and a lot of 3D-printer filament. Tougher than acrylic, doesn't shatter, prints well on inexpensive desk
PLA (Marine-Degradable Variant, BioPBS / Mango Materials Blend)buy The bioplastic that actually biodegrades in seawater. Standard PLA — the common 3D-printer filament and biodegradable cup material — only biodegrades under indu
PLA (Polylactic Acid)voice The desktop-3D-printer plastic. Made from corn or sugarcane, biodegradable in industrial composting, brittle in sunlight. The default for first prints, casual p
PMMA (Acrylic)voice Clear, glasslike plastic. Cuts on a laser, bends in an oven, glues with a syringe and a clear solvent. The plastic that taught most product designers how plasti
Phenolic Resin (Phenol-Formaldehyde, Bakelite)voicebuy The first synthetic plastic — Leo Baekeland's 1909 invention, the original Bakelite. A dark amber-to-black thermoset that cures hard under heat and pressure and
Polyamide 12 (PA12, Nylon 12 — SLS 3D Print Powder)buy The white-to-light-gray plastic of every SLS (selective laser sintering) 3D-printed part. PA12, also called nylon 12, is the workhorse polyamide for selective l
Polycarbonate (PC)voice The transparent thermoplastic safety glasses, riot shields, motorcycle helmet face shields, and Apple's iPhone 5C are made of. About 200 times more impact-resis
Polypropylene Homopolymer (PP)voice The cheapest reasonable engineering thermoplastic — yogurt-cup tubs, prescription-pill bottles, automobile bumper covers, the living-hinge box that snaps closed
Polystyrene (GPPS, General-Purpose / Crystal)buy The clear plastic of every CD jewel case, every disposable cutlery set, every model-shop styrene sheet, every Petri dish, every plastic-window in a packaging bo
Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) The slipperiest solid in commercial use — almost nothing sticks to PTFE, almost no chemicals attack it, and almost no temperature short of 260 °C bothers it. No
Polyurethane Foam (flexible, upholstery) Spongy block, cut to shape, glued or upholstered into the seat of every couch, mattress, and office chair. Compresses, recovers, and over years gets noticeably
Silicone Foam (Closed-Cell Medical / Footwear / Gasket Grade)buy The high-temperature foam that goes where neoprene foam can't — silicone wristbands and medical pads, prosthetic-liner padding, vibration-isolation pads in elec
Silicone Rubber (RTV) The rubbery, slightly squishy material of phone cases, kitchen spatulas, gaskets, and prototype-shop mold-making. Pours as a liquid, cures into a flexible solid
TPE (Thermoplastic Elastomer, SEBS / SBS Family)buy The soft-touch over-mold rubber on every modern toothbrush handle, every power-tool grip, every TPU phone case (the related TPU chemistry is in its own entry —
Thermoplastic Polyurethane (TPU) A polyurethane that's also a thermoplastic — meltable, moldable, and elastic. The flex case on a phone, the sole of a sneaker, the elastic band on a wearable, t

Concordance

House vocabulary — terms ForMatter uses with intent.

anisotropic: Direction-dependent. Wood reads differently along the grain than across it; rolled steel is stiffer along the rolling direction. The Principled-BSDF anisotropic input rotates the highlight to match.
anodize: Electrochemical oxide layer grown on aluminum (Type II / III), titanium, or niobium. Type II accepts dye for color; titanium / niobium use voltage-driven thin-film interference instead of dye. The CMF entry covers the seal step that locks the color in.
application: What the thing IS, in the world. The third entity, peer of material and process. A water bottle, a chair, an extruded-aluminum profile.
BRDF: Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function. The math behind how a surface returns light for any incoming and outgoing direction. The PBR model is a parameterized BRDF.
channeled: A voice block written within a dead author's philosophy, marked and cited. Distinct from a verbatim quote. Roland Barthes channeled on PMMA reads like Barthes; the citation attributes the lineage.
CMF: Color, Material, Finish — the trio designers specify together when handing a part off for production. ForMatter's Finish entity is the F in CMF: 10 categories — polish / anodize / patina / plate / coating / texture / cut / mold_finish / glaze / stone_finish — and 100+ entries. Every finish entry pairs to the materials and processes it suits.
choral fugue: ForMatter's register. Subject stated plainly (freshman tier), answered in technical and sensorial registers, countersubjects from linked processes and applications, citations as final stretto. Voice blocks where canon attaches.
clearcoat: A second specular layer over the base surface. Glossy plastics and lacquered woods get a clearcoat term in the PBR table. IOR 1.5 by default.
compatibility (process): Each process entry lists which materials it can work. The cross-ref renders as sphere pills so the gallery feeling extends inward.
confidence: Each entry tagged high / medium / low. A senior's low-confidence-with-three-citations beats a freshman's high-confidence-with-none. The label is a contract with the reader, not a brag.
crystalline (finish): A faceted-surface read — gemstones, glassy minerals, ice. Drives PBR defaults: IOR 2.42 (diamond), transmission 1.0, low roughness.
derive_pbr(): The build's single source of truth — sphere palette + finish enum → Principled-BSDF starter values. One function feeds the entry-page table, the per-host snippets, the glTF export, and the Three.js Live Preview.
finish (entity): ForMatter's CMF layer — surface treatments and conditions a designer chooses for a given material and process. Categories: polish, anodize, patina, plate, coating, texture, cut, mold_finish, glaze, stone_finish. Distinct from the sphere `finish` enum (metallic / matte / glossy / etc.) which is the visual register of the proxy.
freshman / senior register: Two registers in every entry — the plain freshman description and the technical / sensorial one. Same database, two readers, no extra subscription.
glTF: GL Transmission Format — the open 3D-asset standard every modern app reads. ForMatter emits a .gltf material doc per material. Open standard, designer-friendly handoff.
IOR: Index of Refraction. How much light bends entering the surface. Air 1.0, water 1.33, glass 1.5, diamond 2.42. Drives transmission and the specular term.
iridescent (finish): Hue-shifted accent over base. Anodized titanium and niobium, opal, paraíba. Drives PBR defaults: low metalness, full iridescence, clearcoat.
iridescence: Thin-film interference layer over the base material. KHR_materials_iridescence in glTF, MeshPhysicalMaterial.iridescence in Three.js. Tunable from the FOCUS slider on iridescent / pearlescent entries. The ior and thickness range together set the visible color sweep — opal uses a 100–800 nm thickness range (film, not wavelength) to span the full visible band.
lite-PBR: ForMatter's PBR approach — Principled-BSDF starter values per entry, no measured BRDFs, no commercial assets. Honest reasonable defaults from the finish enum, per-entry numeric overrides where you have a real reason.
Live Preview: The Three.js shader ball that replaces the static CSS sphere on every entry page. One render path for every category — metals, woods, polymers, ceramics, paints, textiles, gemstones, glass. Same derive_pbr() values, real-time lit by a synthetic studio environment, draggable. Optional — toggle in Preferences.
material: What the thing is MADE OF. The first entity. Aluminum 6061, white oak, soda-lime glass.
metallic (finish): Specular highlight, deep shadow rim. Drives PBR defaults: metalness 1, low roughness, IOR 1.45. Polished steel, gold, copper.
mood board: Folded into the Project workspace at /project.html. The mood-board upload, palette extraction, character chips, and matcher results all live alongside the collected items grid and the save .formatter / save PDF / open .formatter actions — one feature, one page.
Ollama: Local-LLM scaffold on the Project page. Off by default. When toggled on in Preferences AND Ollama is reachable at localhost:11434, the natural-language input box ('something soft and warm with a wet read') asks the model to translate the description into character-chip toggles. Never invents material properties; the LLM only translates intent into existing chip vocabulary. The keyword fast-path (chips alone, no LLM) is the default — see suite-wide ai-integration pattern.
project: The full workspace at /project.html — collected materials, processes, applications, finishes plus an optional mood-board image whose dominant colors search the library for matches. Save / open .formatter files round-trip the project state. Cross-conversation: the Project page replaces the slide-down panel that used to live behind the appbar 'project' button.
patina: A chemical color shift on metal — heat-blue on steel, fume-black on silver, verdigris on copper, gun-blue on tool steel, ferric on copper. CMF-layer entry; cited by both the material and the process pages that produce it.
PBR: Physically-Based Rendering. The shading model every modern 3D app uses, parameterized by metallic / roughness / IOR / transmission / clearcoat / sheen. ForMatter publishes starter values for every material entry.
SPI mold finish: Society of the Plastics Industry mold-cavity finish standard. A1 / A2 / A3 (diamond polish, mirror), B1 / B2 / B3 (paper, semi-gloss), C1 / C2 / C3 (stone, matte), D1 / D2 / D3 (dry blast, textured). The finish prints from the mold cavity onto the molded part — a designer picks the SPI grade with the molder when specifying the tool.
Principled BSDF: Blender's name for the consolidated PBR shader. Most other apps ship the same shader under different names (Standard Surface, ShaderGraph, Substance). One node, every output.
process: How the material is MADE INTO the thing. The second entity. Cast, machined, kerf-bent, anodized, planished, granulated. Process is a peer of material, not a footnote.
quote: A voice block carrying a verbatim quotation from a living author, with citation. Distinct from a channeled block. Living = quote only; the rule is enforced at the schema layer.
roughness: Microsurface scatter. 0 is mirror-smooth; 1 is fully diffuse. Most real surfaces sit between 0.2 and 0.8.
sphere proxy: ForMatter's visible-character stand-in for every material. CSS-gradient driven by the entry's palette and finish, not a baked render. Honest about being a proxy, scales to six hundred entries cheaply, tweakable in one place.
substitute: A peer material that could fill a similar role. Cross-references render as sphere pills inside an entry — the gallery feeling extends inward.
transmission: How much light passes through. 1 is fully transparent; 0 is opaque. Glass, gemstones, clear plastics carry transmission.
PVD: Physical Vapor Deposition — vacuum-chamber sputter or cathodic-arc deposition of a thin ceramic film onto a metal substrate. The CMF-layer's modern coating chemistry: TiN (gold), ZrN (champagne), CrN (pewter), TiCN (warm bronze / rose-gold), AlTiN (charcoal-anthracite, near-black), DLC (deep black). Hard, doesn't tarnish, paint-thin.
VDI 3400: German engineering reference standard for mold-cavity texture (Erodieren bearbeitete Werkstückoberflächen). The full scale runs reference plates 0–45 by Ra value; production specs typically draw from 12–45 because plates 0–11 require diamond-mirror polish on the mold cavity and are rarely commissioned in commercial tooling. Pairs with the SPI standard; both define what gets cut into the mold.
voice block: A versal block where a real authored voice attaches to the material or process. Schema-tagged with status (living / dead) and mode (quote / channeled). Citations always.
woodgrain (finish): Directional sheen with grain ring. Drives PBR defaults: anisotropic 0.6, medium roughness, no metalness. Every wood entry.

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ForMatter

Materials and processes for people who design and make things.

A local-first library of materials, processes, applications, and finishes — equal weight, citable everywhere, with cost-over-volume curves, trade-off profiles, equipment-tier filters, and second-life paths layered onto the data so a student can move from "what is this" toward "what's actually buildable here, now, by me." Part of the renato.design ecosystem — sibling of Plenum, Specimen, Ingenue, gesture, graf, and the Renato Rhino plug-ins. Form and matter, inseparable.

Why this exists

Half of teaching materials is teaching how the material is made into the thing. The standard subscription library was always light on that half. The wedge here isn't better samples or a prettier interface — it's treating Process as a peer entity, not a footnote.

Rules of the house

Citations or it didn't happen. Every property number, every claim, every borrowed register has a traceable source.
Living authors are quoted only. Verbatim or not at all.
Dead authors may be channeled within their philosophy — marked, cited, never impersonated.
Permalink or nothing. Museum holdings link to the specific collection-record URL. Designer overview pages, press releases, and exhibition listings don't qualify.
Relative, not absolute. Cost, lead time, and other figures that age get published as ratios and ranges. Crossover points beat magnitudes.
Confidence labeled honestly. A senior's low-confidence-with-three-citations beats a freshman's high-confidence-with-none.
Local-first. Works offline, no login, no subscription.

Sister apps

Ingenue — five voices argue about what to build from electronic parts. Where ForMatter teaches what the thing is made of, Ingenue proposes what the thing could be.
Plenum — VIN, fender-tag, and broadcast-sheet decoder for muscle and pony cars; doo-wop register.
Specimen — iPhone 3D scanner that treats the captured object as a specimen, with voiced commentary.
renato.design — the rest.

Sources

Conway's Material World on raw materials, Lefteri's Making It on processes, Forty's Concrete and Culture, Sparke's Design in Context, Bürdek's Design: History, Theory and Practice of Product Design, Schröpfer's Material Design on materials in architecture, Winchester's The Perfectionists on tolerance, Minshall's Your Life Is Manufactured on the global supply chain, von Busch's Making Trouble on material activism, Were's How Materials Matter, Hegger / Drexler / Zeumer's Basics Materials, Untracht and McCreight on metalsmithing, USDA Forest Products Lab on woods, GIA on gemstones, Schott / CoorsTek / Toray / Owens Corning datasheets, MakeItFrom for verifiable property numbers, ASM Handbook, ISO standards. Museum holdings draw from the Met, MAD, V&A, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Newark Museum of Art, British Museum, Heard Museum, Smithsonian NMAI, Eiteljorg Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cranbrook Art Museum, and Grand Rapids Art Museum — collection-record permalinks only, designer overview pages and exhibition listings excluded. Voice blocks now ride on every entry kind — material, process, application, and finish — and include Ruskin on iron, Anni Albers on twining, Greg Lynn on the shred-and-teeth NURBS lineage, Pugin on the metal that won't be hammered, Barthes / Yanagi / Benjamin channeled within their philosophy; Sparke, Bürdek, Forty, Conway, Schröpfer, Minshall, von Busch, Lefteri, Pat Pruitt, Mary Lee Hu, Tom Joyce, Albert Paley, and the rest of the contemporary makers quoted verbatim with citation. All cited.

v0.6.83 — 2026-06-01 · Phil Renato · renato.design · MIT-licensed code, CC BY-NC research content

Preferences

Local to this browser. No cloud, no account, no telemetry.

Live Preview on entry pages Three.js shader ball replacing the static sphere. Disable on slower hardware or to keep entry pages text-only.

UI scale Browser-style zoom. Useful for classroom projection or close work.

Sphere density How many material spheres fit per row on the landing grid. Smaller spheres pack more across the page; larger ones fewer. Adapts to desktop and phone.

more fewer

Default confidence filter Search dropdown defaults to this level when the page loads.

Local LLM (Ollama) Off by default. When on, the Project page surfaces a natural-language input that asks Ollama (running locally at localhost:11434) to translate descriptions like "something soft and warm" into character-chip toggles. The LLM never invents material properties — only translates intent into existing vocabulary. Keyword chips remain the fast-path; this is a layer on top.

Default register Entry pages can render in 'more' mode (everything visible — freshman + senior register, property tables, PBR, voices, citations) or 'less' mode (freshman desc + sphere + cross-links + citations only). Per-entry toggle override available via the 'register' button next to '+ project'.

Stored in localStorage under formatter:prefs.