My Cnc Foam Cutter

[VINYLIMAGEZ]

I thought I'll share this project I made about 5 years ago, It was a fun project to make, I's a home made cnc foam cutter, I built it mainly to make my own wing cores for my fliying habbit , I't been a profitable little machine, been selling foam cores to friends and been shipping them every now and then to different parts of the country. I been thinking of making a bigger machine (8'x4' feet) to make signs with, but I haven't had time to get to it, hopefully I will get around to make it one of these days.

I fly rc combat here in Texas and like to travel to some big competition events, One of my designs I fly got me 1st place in one of the biggest Rc combat meet in the Nation "The Lone Star Nationals" early this year http://rccombat.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=13473

heres some pics of my cnc foam cutter

heres a vid of me flying at the Lone Star Nats in march this year, the rccombatcores.com is a website Iv been working on, just haven't finished it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PItXYBsq1U
enjoy!

 

[jiarby]

A hot wire with some stepper motors to get XYZ Axis? Is it 3 Axis? Post a video of you using the cutter!

 

[VINYLIMAGEZ]

A hot wire with some stepper motors to get XYZ Axis? Is it 3 Axis? Post a video of you using the cutter!

it's 4 axis, I'm using Foamworks.

 

[Cross Signs]

Details on the cutter... please

 

[signage]

Would like to see a video of it working/cutting something!

 

[VINYLIMAGEZ]

heres the controller board i used http://www.stepperworld.com/fet3.htm#FET4target
the steppers I bought on ebay for dirt cheap, there nema 23 or 24 size, (can't remember)
the plans I bougt of ebay to, they were like 15 bucks, all the mdf parts are from home depot, I'm running on old 400 mhz pentium 2 pc win98 I bought for like 20 bucks, the project coast less then $500.00 bucks, took me like 1 month working on it on evenings. It was fun. A bigger one like the one I want to build will be like around 1g.

 

[VINYLIMAGEZ]

Would like to see a video of it working/cutting something!

I don't have a video of it in action, I will record a video in my next batch of cores I cut.

 

[jiarby]

can you cut letters with it?

 

[VINYLIMAGEZ]

can you cut letters with it?

yes, to design I use Cadworks (its a bit like autocad), then u load the file to foamworks and cut. (http://www.foamwork.net/), (this sounds easy, but there a learning curve to it, this is because u are using a constant line that has to be followed).

 

[jiarby]

found loads of videos here:
http://www.8linx.com/cnc/video.htm

 

[iSign]

cool stuff for sure!!

 

[iSign]

you could shape surfboards with that!

 

[VINYLIMAGEZ]

heres a forum with lots of Info http://cnczone.com/ , I hang around here to

 

[surf city]

Nice machine, great hobby. Would definately like to see it in use.