Tired of cutting your foam sheets down to size? [jgschmidt] certainly was, and after one-too-many hours cutting foam manually, he built himself a machine that cuts sheets automatically, and he guides you through the process step-by-step.
[jgschmidt’s] build is a clever assembly of stock parts acquired from ServoCity. That’s a nice touch, considering we don’t often see their components in quick hacks. With a stepper to feed more foam, and a stepper to drive the blade mechanism, the device can consistently cut foam from a roll to desired lengths.
The blade mechanism consists of two exacto blades fixed nose-to-nose such that the machine can cut on both forward and reverse sweeps. While we’ve certainly seen some stellar past foam cutter builds, we can’t resist drooling over the speedy throughput of [jgschmidt’s] machine as it cuts on both forward and back-strokes. Finally, when the blades dull, they can be swapped out for a few dime’s worth of new parts.
Many of the steps in [jgschmidt’s] build are laudably practical with a “get it done” attitude. From hot-glued wire insulation to the double-edged blade formed from exacto knives, we’re thrilled to see him take a few pieces off the shelf and few pieces off the web and build himself a new workshop tool. Perhaps the neatest feature of this hack is its ability to rapidly transform a raw material into numerous repeatable, useful forms for his customers.
via [Instructables]
That’s hypnotic!
Automagic entropy machine !
A worthwhile upgrade may be rotary cutting blades. A bit more expensive, but available at most fabric stores and in theory they’ll last longer than razor blades since there’s more blade there.
They are also just about as cheap and widely available and probably more suitable for something like this.
This could be adapted to a lot of things that need to be cut to certain lengths.
Could use an encoder if you want to get fancy or just a home switch to “recalibrate” it every so often to account for any drift.
I’m trying to think of a good reason to mount one of these in my bathroom.
I wonder if you can repupose the guts of a garbage find inkjet printer to do the same thing… It’s a very similar assembly, mechanically speaking. Dead inkjets are super easy to get too.
He commented in the instructable that printers weren’t wide enough, and probably wouldn’t have strong enough motors.
I’m sure a printer would work for a “lighter duty” machine though.
How much lighter can you get than cutting foam? Single sheets of paper?
Those foam rolls weigh allot when brand new, enough that a printer motor won’t cut it, the motor isn’t just cutting the foam there’s one unrolling it I have wanted to make one of these for my moms business
So do you grill those bazillion cut foam sheets in a barbeque sauce or what?
Pretty slick. Well done!
I like it, especially because it is also good looking. I’d add a counter too, just for the fun of it.
I’m still left wondering what those sheets are for.
Saying “making stuff” just doesn’t CUT it for me.