Hot Wire anyone?

[Walterchang]

I have to cut lots of foam while in the shop. The old ways of an electric knife just wasn't doing a good enough job. So I rigged together a hot wire. It works fairly well. It was actually fairly easy to make. What do you think?

 

[WR250F]

Excellent !!!

Need details on how to build one of my own.

I've really been putting off a couple of little projects because I need a hot knife that isn't ****.

 

[G1GRANDEUR]

People make those to cut pelican case forms to fit their guns.

Nice job.

 

[malibu101]

Interesting!
What type of wire does a guy use for the hot wire? Where does a guy buy it at?
What's up with the biefcase? A power supply?
When you have a moment, I (and I'm sure others) would like some detail on this setup.

 

[Walterchang]

I made it out of spare parts at the shop. I googled hot wire and came across a few different plans. I decided on band saw type of approach as I need to have perfectly vertical cuts.

The suitcase is a 24v power supply that we use for remote heads. I had to use a 2 ohm smoke stack resistor to get the wire hot enough.

You are supposed to use Nicrhom wire? I have no idea where to get it. I used guitar sting that we had.

We had another power supply laying around the shop that I eventually used. It has adjustable voltage and amps which helps dictate how hot the wire will get.

All you really need to do is to connect a positive and a negative to a wire. I made mine so I could disconnect the wire to do interior holes. I just tied the wire to a spring that I bent one end into a hook to loop around my eye bolt.

I used a turn buck at first to adjust the tension on the wire, but it turned out to be a pain in the ***. When the wire heats up it would stretch. I ditched that idea and used a 10 pound weight off the back to adjust the tension.

Also it is really important to be able to get the wire perfectly at a 90 degree angle or the cuts will not be square.