Is Teflon the best mouse mat material?

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19 Jul 2015
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I've tried a lot of different materials for mouse mats over the years - various metals, plastics, fabrics, wood, and other more exotic materials. Of all of them, PTFE (Teflon) is the only one I didn't feel was lacking in some way. I'm posting this here now because I happened to be looking at mouse mats recently, and didn't see any PTFE ones at all. A bit more searching and I see that they are commercially available, but rare, despite PTFE seeming to be an obvious choice, and working well in my experience.

Originally I tried a solid PTFE sheet, which worked poorly because my mouse didn't track well on it (I suppose a featureless white surface isn't ideal), and despite being famously non-stick, it eventually attracts a thin layer of grime, making it not low-friction at all.

What worked better was glass fibre coated with PTFE. This stuff is sold for various purposes, such as oven liner. The glass fibres give the surface a fine texture. It doesn't suffer from the same problem with dirt as solid PTFE; presumably dirt is pushed into the little dents in the surface, leaving the low-friction PTFE exposed above. These sheets can't be used on their own though, as they are too flexible and slippery, and won't stay still on a desk. So I laminated some with other materials.

Here's a photo of pieces of the raw materials:

materials.jpg


The bottom layer is cork/rubber, which sticks quite well to a desk. Plain cork would be fine too, I just happened to have a sheet of mixed cork/rubber handy.

In the middle is carbon fibre to add stiffness. Because I used UD fabric (fibres running in only one direction), I had to use two layers at 90° to each other. I only used UD because it's what I had to hand; if I had used woven fabric then a single layer would have been sufficient.

The glass/PTFE sheet is on the top. By its nature it's hard to get it to stick to the other layers, but if the surface is roughened up enough with sand-paper then epoxy will stick to it well enough.

Here's a photo of the completed mouse mat. It's around 5 years old now, so it's looking quite worn. Despite the glass fibres being exposed in a few places, it's still a slick surface:

whole.jpg


And here's a photo from the side, showing the layers glued together, with no delamination even after years of use:

layers.jpg


And that's it. A bit tricky to get everything stuck together, but required no special tools to make, and it was cheap and has worked very well.
 
my only concern would be glass (and CF) fibres coming loose and getting into your skin (particularly your wrist rubbing against the front edge of it where the layers are exposed). Would need to make sure that was well sealed!
CF splinters are certainly unpleasant. As you can see from the photos, there hasn't been any appreciable wear at the edges, and no fibres poking out. A mouse mat like this could be made with more benign fibres instead of CF; hemp would be good. Unfortunately the glass is unavoidable since there are no sheets of other fibes coated with PTFE that I have found. It hasn't been a problem though.

Main downside is its huge and with a desk with curved edges
It's a bit of a PITA
That's an advantage of making your own! The curves on mine exactly match the edge of my desk.
 
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