Time to go vertical.!

[vtcnc]

Hadn't thought about this before, but it would be great to gain back some of the floor space taken up by my 4'x4' CNC hot wire foam cutter. The table is even larger than 4x4. And certainly reaching over the surface is difficult now.

The only things to work out would be clamping methods. Presently I just use weights to hold the foam down. Foam has very little weight itself, but isn't easily clamped, since pressure needs to applied over a larger surface area than other harder materials. But I'm sure the other advantages would outweigh the disadvantage of more difficult clamping. Incidentally, for foam cutting purposes, the table itself could be built less stiff for a vertical cofiguration -- a horizontal table foam cutter mainly has to support its own weight to avoid sag -- well, and the weight of all of the junk that gets inevitably piled on it when not in use! Vertical orientation would sure cure that, wouldn't it?

I like it!


EDIT: Thinking further about it, when wire cutting foam there is often movement of the blank's top surface because the cut weakens the blank -- there may be some thin sections (with substantial kerf) that develop during a part cut. Usually you sequence your cuts so that the foam movement occurs above cuts rather than below -- the base is stationary and a reference.

By using weights on a horizontal table, the blank is still held to the table, even if the top of the blank drops a little. For a vertical table, we would need clamps that automatically adjust for this. So, probably spring loaded large area pads would be required for a conventional clamp.


FURTHER EDIT: Maybe a clamp pad made of two layers of thin sheet material -- say 2" x 6" x 1/8" , with a layer of sponge rubber glued between would work for this. With several of these pads made up I could use conventional clamps.