April maker challenge 4 and 5- Acrylic bender and tabletop foam cutter

I'm a day behind so it's a two-for-one, but a quickie, because I'm behind in every possible metric my life could be measured in.

Number 4 is a tabletop hot-wire foam cutter. Imagine a scrollsaw or bandsaw, but instead of a saw blade, using a piece of hot wire. It excels in cutting intricate shapes out of pieces of expanded polystyrene foam, and can be used on other thin and low-density plastics as well.

Number 5 is an extension of this. By putting the hot wire at the edge of a table, along the corner, a piece of acrylic can be heated evenly along a line, which will allow it to be bent.

Both of these use the same power supply. That will be described as a future project.

Comments

  1. lick knee.April 16, 2009 at 9:09 PM

    i have a plastic sheet bender at work. i think an "edge-wire" might end up cutting and sticking plastic. it has a fancyish woven glass sheath on the heating element as to not stick to plastics.
    also - localized heating too fast causes bubbles in most plastics.

    ReplyDelete

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