Sometimes I winder if the hot end can melt its way through styrophome but still leave some to act as support for what your priniting.
Yeah, the foam near where it touched contracts away from the tip as well- you can see this if you do foam sculpting with a soldering iron or hot knife. It's also incredibly toxic to be basically burning styrofoam in the shop, so not the best plan. I think some kind of monolithic support structure is a good idea, I've had the idea before as well- non-printed supports would allow some really wild structures at a whole range of scales. Not 100% sure what it would look like- a fine powder that gets layered in would probably get aerosolized by the moving head and require heavy vacuum for safety, and a liquid would likely distort parts through both heat conduction and wave propagation from the moving parts.
