Self-healing cutting mats have become popular over the recent years, with many industrial and hobby workspaces involving the mats to protect surfaces from a variety of threats. Cutting mats are designed to protect from cutting damage and provide an optimal, blade-friendly work surface, keeping the worktops undamaged and ensuring knives and cutters last as long as possible. Thanks to this, cutting mats are extremely durable by nature, ensuring a long-lasting solution that can also resist other threats outside of cutting damage.
Here at Rhino Cutting Mats, we pride ourselves on the highly respected name we have become within the industry, providing customers with exceptional surfaces and mats for any kind of environment. Leveraging this experience and knowledge, we have put together this brief guide exploring a very common question we get asked – are cutting mats heat-resistant? By the end of this post, you should be fully aware of the best cutting mat for your needs when working around heat, whether that be within an industrial workshop or a private working area.
Can Cutting Mats Prevent Heat Damage?
Self-healing cutting mats are brilliant feats of materials science and ideal for use with advanced composites as well. Each mat is designed to not just avoid the blunting of your blade but also reduce aesthetic marks and prevent cuts from going awry by ‘healing’ and filling in previously damaged parts of the surface. However, heat damage is very different from cutting damage – so how does the material behave in response to high temperatures?
Most cutting mats are very heat resistant, but extended heat exposure will definitely decrease the mat’s lifespan. Heat weakens the bonds of the material, causing it to become fatigued, less flexible and generally not fit for purpose.
If you are planning to use a cutting mat when operating a hot glue gun or working with high-temperature material, ensure your mat is of an appropriate thickness to help reduce the risk of warping and fatigue. At Rhino Cutting Mats, we specialise in providing three highly versatile cutting services suitable for a variety of needs; Rhino Green Cutting Mat, Rhino Heavy-Duty Cutting Mat and Rhino SupaSeal Clear Cutting Mat. Each of these cutting mats is heat resistant, though they still lean to different uses and applications.
Rhino Green Cutting Mat
Our Rhino Green Cutting Mat is perfect for smaller hobby projects and can be used in a range of different environments from schools and craft colleges to textiles studios and sewing workspaces. From a heat resistance perspective, this particular mat is ideal for situations involving a hot glue gun, which only presents a small amount of heat. Whilst generally resistant to higher temperatures, our green cutting mat is likely to experience more noticeable aesthetic damage than the other two options. With this in mind, if you’re looking to work with very high-temperature items, the Heavy-Duty or SupaSeal options may be more effective.
Rhino Heavy-Duty Cutting Mat
Perfect for the kitchen, the Rhino Heavy-Duty Cutting Mat is a great solution for large worktop applications. As an extremely durable surface and boasting a 4.5mm thickness, this self-healing mat is great at protecting worksurfaces or benches. This mat can handle most major cutting jobs with ease and boasts exceptional durability, including very effective heat resistance; though, as with all surfaces of this nature, it can be affected by extended exposure.
Rhino SupaSeal Clear Cutting Mat
The SupaSeal Cutting Mat is the thickest cutting mat we have available with exceptional self-healing properties, providing a perfect, long-lasting cutting surface that doubles as brilliant workbench protection. At 5mm thick, this surface is doubled sided for twice the lifespan and is capable of handling highly intensive work. In fact, the SupaSeal clear cutting mat doubles as our most industrial product available and remains suitable for flat-bed laminator or roller tables. This mat is also extremely heat resistant and capable of handling the variety of threats it may face in the industrial environment.
These three cutting mats all boast impressive heat resistance and can cater to almost all applications and needs. Whatever your requirements, the Rhino Cutting Mat team can help you create a strong and durable workspace that adapts to what you demand of it. Order a free cutting mat sample pack today, or get in touch with our dedicated team for bespoke advice.
