Anyone successfully built and integrated a hot wire foam cutter from scratch? Any good resources out there you can recommend?
Hello,
Are you referring to the software part or the hardware part?
Software-wise there's an example on the forum, for integration you don't need much more than a relay to enable/disable the cutter (which you could also do by hand). I'm not sure if people really use a PID or something like that to control the temperature, we usually just set the power and kept it there during cutting. But these are things you could do with a PLC, for example.
Hardware-wise it's not much more than a wire (e.g. guitar string, if you're improvising) and a power supply. I'm not the electronics expert so I'm hesitant to give any advice there. Ours has got a welding PSU with an extra transformator.
But I've seen people use PSUs taken from PCs as well, as an example.
And you'll need a system for keeping the wire's tension, as it gets longer as it heats up.
Best,
Johannes
I am talking about both software and hardware.
What's an appropriate temperature range for the wire? Haven't been able to find this info from manufacturers on the web.
Thanks.
From my experience the wire doesn't heat up in a completely regular way - as cutting cools it down as well - and foam can also be very different. So the approach for us was mostly just to start slow and turn it up gradually.
Best,
Johannes