Foam XL hot wire cutter

[Boyan Silyavski]

The balls are Delrin, so would be the printed cages. There is no steel on aluminum.

Agree about the aluminum profile, there is false economy there.

I have cut till now at most 100mm thick. I cut at 200 mm/min and i don't push the hot wire in the block, rather the heat makes the cut, so no stretching or effort at that speed. I am not in a production environment, but even when i would be, what matters is the cut quality, not the speed. And it seems at that speed all details cut well.

[charlieuk]

that's incredibly slow for such thin material and no use if you want to cut big blocks you will be there all day. With a cnc and no templates you obviously have to be very carful not to push the wire as if you do you will not get a straight cut when it comes to curves this is also where tension is very important so the higher the tension the less likely you are to get problems. I think with time even hard plastic would start to leave a mark on aluminium but by all means try it, personally I don't see it being accurate or stiff or durable enough.

If there is a slightly cheaper linniar rail option for the long axis I would be happy to pay for it the vertical axis could probably get away with maybe something like v bearings certainly if its only two axis but like you say you need smoothness or else it shows up very clearly in the surface finnish

[Boyan Silyavski]

" Incredibly slow" ??? I have no previous experience with foam and was trying to find info on internet what is the normal speed to no avail. So i did some experiments heating more the wire and going faster, slower and so on. 200mm/min gave me the best quality/speed relation .

What you say is the normal speed for this?

Why i have to push the wire into the foam, this means the cut will lose precision? I will not be cutting big blocks all day, i am cutting intricate shapes. if i would be cutting big blocks all day i will make a cutter with 20 wires heated at once, not one wire.

[Clive S]

. if i would be cutting big blocks all day i will make a cutter with 20 wires heated at once, not one wire.

Good luck with the power supply then you would need about say 36V at 100A

[Robin Hewitt]

Good luck with the power supply then you would need about say 36V at 100A

You think a minor thing a 3.6kW power supply would put Boyan off?

In my one foam cutting experience, I found I was trying to balance the wire bowing in to an arc against the width of the cut becoming uncontrollably large. It was also different depending on the material, maybe I had the wrong stuff.

[charlieuk]

im cutting 30" blocks at about 500mm/min and I would consider that still painfully slow at a guess 100mm blocks would be well over 1000mm/min

like robin has said getting the wire not to bow is the hard thing and the longer the wire the harder that is. You will also need to take into account that the wire stretches when it heats up so you will need to take this into account.