I’m teaching students with this machine and need a decent material for learning, I am thinking plastic. I’m wondering if buying a length of Trex lumber might be good value. I’ll need a lot of these, so just thinking outside the box.
If you have any plastic suppliers in your area reach out to see if they sell drops/scraps. Very often they pay for disposal and they’ll happily sell you a pallet full of cut offs very inexpensively. Generally any plastics cut well, you might consider a single flute cutter and definitely a neutral or an upcut bit. Do not run a downcut bit with plastic or it’ll melt! Delrin would be great to cut but is worth more/costs more so it’s rarer than HDPE/PE/acrylic/polycarb/etc.
I ended up by PVC trim boards and it works great, ultimately it cost 62 cents for a 3x4 inch part.
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I know this is a bit late, but have you tried Polypropylene? I’ve cut some on the 440 with very little experience and it felt very easy to work with. You can probably buy a larger piece of stock and cut it down to size with regular hand tools.
Another good option is foam board insulation. It’s not very strong for making things out of but of great material for practicing contouring and such
Casting wax is great. Makes a mess like anything else but you can melt all the chips back together in a cookie sheet and start again. They have varying hardness waxes too.
I’ve used soap bars before. This was a fun for the students to put in their own “brand” on the bar and it is very forgiving on tool life.