Today's project was making a foam wire cutter. Here's the setup:
I mostly followed the instructions at
instructables.com/id/Hot-wire-foam-cutter/, with the main variation to use a battery charger as a power supply, as someone had suggested in the comments. Since I did not know which wire would work well with the battery charger, I ordered a $20
multi-pack of nichrome wire rom Amazon that contains sizes from 22 to 36 gauge. I started with the 26 gauge wire, which did get hot enough to cut foam, but only very slowly. So I switched to 24 gauge, which worked fine for the test cut shown on the left. But before we can use it to dig out Nina's board, we'll have to make wood templates of the profile, which will be attached to the sides of the foam block to guide the wire.
Back when I built my first board, everything was shaped by hand - but the core was PU foam, which was really easy to shape. The XPS foam I'm using for this board seems a lot harder to sand, so the wire cutter will be a big help. Let's hope it works as planned...
