Day 50, My Hot Wire Foam Cutter
Today marks fifty entries in the "My Garage Gems" series, and I thought I would dust off something that I haven't used in a while, but which I mentioned the other way when I showed off my chisel box: a hot wire foam cutter. This is something that I tinkered together because I wanted to accurately cut some foam pieces for a project which frankly I cannot remember, but which I do dust off occasionally. It is actually a pretty easy project.
The basic idea is simple: you have a tightly stretched nichrome wire that you pass an electric current through, which makes it get hot enough to melt the foam you are cutting through. You then can guide it through your piece, and voila: a nicely cut edge. I used 28 gauge nichrome wire I got from Amazon which is held in tension by a spring. I have a set of power leads with alligator clips (somewhere, not pictured because I couldn't immediately find them) hooked to a power supply that allows you to adjust the voltage and current (and therefore the temperature) of the wire. The power supply that I used is one that I had for my electronics tinkering: an Eventek KPS305D which doesn't seem to be available anymore, but this model appears to be its more modern replacement although it is nothing special, and if you didn't have or need a bench supply, you could probably find a dedicated module for < $10 that would work. '
I made this with an adjustable fence so I could cut off blocks of a standard size. A small spring at the top provides tension. You could also clamp a template to your piece, and use that to guide the wire around to make more complex or accurate shapes.
Happy Hump Day, all!