Hot Wire Styrofoam Cutter?

Lighthorseman

Active Member
I'll just bet that a Gauge member has put together a home-built hot wire styrofoam cutter. Is this a difficult project? Is it just easier to tootle down to the LHS and buy one?

I'm asking because my wife has a very nice adjustable power-supply thingy for her stained glass soldering iron, as she needs different temperatures for different types of solder and copper foil. If I'm not mistaken, one of these also happens to make a dandy hot wire controller. Is this correct?

Is a hot wire cutter simply a device that heats the wire by creating a short circuit?

Please do tell!
 

jim currie

Active Member
Steve
if the thing your wife has is a resistance soldering tool will work just need ni-crome like Jon said been playing around with with one just bend wire in shape you want .
 

Vic

Active Member
Foam Cutter....Real Cheap

You've probably got all of the stuff just laying around. I've built several of these things. They work just fine. Just make sure that the nichrome wire is real taut. It should go "twang" if you pluck it.

I'll leave the dimensions and the wire routing up to you.

STEVE:....Since the foam cutter is "dead short" I wouldn't use the wife's good heat controller....It probably doesn't have any protection as it is "geared" to the resistance of her soldering tool.
Use an old trainset power pack instead and vary the heat with the throttle control. The worse that can happen if you set it too high is that the curcuit breaker in the powerpack will open and then reset when it cools down.
 

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billk

Active Member
The I one got (by tootling down to Michael's arts-craftsy store) uses a couple of D-cell batteries for power. Seems to work just fine.
 

jon-monon

Active Member
The ni-chrome wire is ratd in ohms/ft., so, the longer the wire, the less power will be required. Less power will also mean less heat. If you know the resstance of the wire, you can divide the voltage by the resistance and get the current requirement (amps).

A 12V car battery charger rated at higher amperages should do nicely too.
 

MasonJar

It's not rocket surgery
I did one pretty much like the diagram Vic supplied. Used an old (really old) power pack, some telephone wire, and a wood frame.

I got the nichrome wire for $2.50 at the hobby shop off the Woodland $cenic$ display - it's replacement wire for their $65 cutter.

One thing I would suggest is that you make some sort of tensioner (is that a word?) that keep sthe wire tight. As it heats up, it tends to stretch. This is really only a problem if you wan to cut your own grades or risers, and need a smooth, flat surface.

Andrew
 

ezdays

Out AZ way
I am still working on my first layout and am finding that cutting with a knife is a big PITA when I want a smooth cut. I have seen somwhere that a good alternate to a hot wire cutter is an electric knife. Seems to me to be a bit easier to control and no danger of being burned. Plus, it has one end open, whereas the hot wire needs to have both ends secured to the frame.

Has anyone used an electric knife, and if so, is it worthwhile?

Don
 

Vic

Active Member
SAFETY PRECAUTIONS

Just a couple of notes for those considering cutting foam with a hot wire.

1. Be sure your cutting area is well ventilated. The fumes that result are toxic.:eek:

2. Don't heat up your wire "red hot", just hot enough to cut the foam. It doesn't take much heat to cut the foam.

3. Let the tool do the work, don't force it. The wire will break easily when hot. Experiment with the temperature...when you have the right setting it will slice right thru the foam with little or no smoke.
 

Ray Marinaccio

Active Member
This is something I built to cut the roadbed contour after the track was laid.
I bent a paperclip for the cutting tool.
The length of the wire leading to the cutting head will determine how hot it gets.
I would use the nichrome wire tool described earlier in the thread for large areas.
 

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TinGoat

Ignorant know it all
Hot wire foam cutter

Hi Steve,

If you are still on the OCMODS yahoo group, take a look at: Hot Wire Foam Cutter.

I'd just cut 'n paste it here, but that scrambles the diagrams and I can't add a .txt file as an attachment.

If anyone else is interested, then I could send it to you via e-mail. Just PM me to let me know.
 
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