hot knife cnc attachments are a lot of fun because of the low forces involved, and they can deal with a surprising amount of material variety; just make sure to deal with fumes.
As someone who has been deeply interested in this type of manufacturing technology for ages, my jaw is on the floor. Kudos to the person that made this. I'm so impressed.
If you like this, check out this channel's other videos, this creator has a sort of orthogonal way of thinking about mechanisms that I deeply appreciate. It's always a treat when they upload.
However, I hate styrofoam with every cell in my body. I'm philosophically against anything that extends its useful lifetime by any amount of time. It's probably the worst thing for the environment, and it's essentially like toxic waste. When you just barely touch it, small flakes come off into the wind and they will never go away at least in our lifetime. I think we should have a world-wide ban on styrofoam in particular, even if prices go up.
if you didn’t hate it enough, styrofoam is part of a hydrogen bomb…it absorbs gamma rays from the uranium nuke, heats up, and becomes a hot plasma. Then it causes fusion in the lithium deuteride, which is the fusion fuel.
We've built a lot of formwork for construction ( quite exotic projects ) with this method using industrial robots [1]. Some of the formwork stays in place after pouring the concrete acting as insulation. Than again, formwork is a means to an end, hence diamond wire cutting marble was a fun tangential [2]
Just a reminder: Burning foam releases toxic gases (inc. CO, benzene, toluene, and more). If you're going to be using heat to cut foam it needs to be in a well ventilated place. And, yes, I completely grasp that a hot wire isn't a large surface area but a lot of these off-gases will pool in areas without a moderate air current.
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[ 5.8 ms ] story [ 72.1 ms ] threadHowever, I hate styrofoam with every cell in my body. I'm philosophically against anything that extends its useful lifetime by any amount of time. It's probably the worst thing for the environment, and it's essentially like toxic waste. When you just barely touch it, small flakes come off into the wind and they will never go away at least in our lifetime. I think we should have a world-wide ban on styrofoam in particular, even if prices go up.
2) Draw the rest of the fucking owl: 1:20
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330914101_SCALING_A... [2] https://vimeo.com/94076571
Just a reminder: Burning foam releases toxic gases (inc. CO, benzene, toluene, and more). If you're going to be using heat to cut foam it needs to be in a well ventilated place. And, yes, I completely grasp that a hot wire isn't a large surface area but a lot of these off-gases will pool in areas without a moderate air current.