The silicone will feel very different depending on how big the piece is, if you had a small piece of one of the softer materials, it would feel soft, but the larger pieces made out of the same material will feel harder. This can be due to geometry, and surface area.

Squeeze: Gripping and squeezing a 1" diameter shaft out of #30 or #18, there will be very little compression, some compression with 10 but with 0050 you could some, and easily with 0020. However, if this was 2" in diameter, #10 will feel as difficult as #18 and #0050 seems as difficult as #10.

Bend: If you had a 1" diameter shaft 1 foot long, it would not want to bend over and touch the two ends together if made out of 30 as it would be to stiff to bend 180 degrees, but more possible if made out of the softer option 18, and 0020 could be curled into a snake.

Stretch: The firm ones aren't going to stretch very much without some weight, #10 would be a thick exercise band if it was 1" diameter, but it could be stretched some, and 0050 would stretch well, and 0020 would stretch pretty far and easily.

Twist: Its basically the same as the others, the hard ones won't want to twist much, 10 is more willing, and 0050 will more easily but not as easy as 0020.

All of these exercises aren't recommended on any of the pieces, you will just be fatiguing it, not that it can't handle some abuse, twisting may be the most dangerous to its integrity, causing it to sheer if you put enough torque on it, most people couldn't twist a piece in two, but it's possible, especially with smaller diameter pieces.

Above is an attempt to show how the differnt materials droop off of a rasied flat surface. Pieces made of differnt material(but same geometry) are laid on a ream of paper with steel rods for mass to cantilever the overhanging end. The pictures are an attempt to show how the different materails would feel.

Below this there are compression tests, with 5lbs(2.26KG) weights on pieces (also there is a 1/8" sheet of steel with a black rubber buffer so I could get the calipers in place to measure it), mushing them with differnt amounts of weight, and the compression mesured with calipers.

As above, there should be arrows at the bottom right corner of the image that will cycle though them, and they should auto cycle every 6 seconds.

If you have an idea of what other setups I could try, dont hesitate to email us, and I will consider it.

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