Design and Development of a 4-Axis Hot Wire Foam Cutter

Abstract

A 3D foam cutter has many direct applications in the automotive and aerospace industries. There have been many successful 3D foam cutter designs and patents that have been put to use like the augmented foam cutter from Australia. The aim of this project is to design a 4-axis 3D foam cutter based on a hot wire cutting process. Using an open source software available on the internet, working on this 3D foam cutting machine will be used to drive the hot wire around the foam. The main objectives of this project are; a. Test new design for a 3D hot wire foam cutter with 4-axis movement. b. Incorporating existing designs of tension control and heating mechanism of hot-write foam cutters in the machine. c. Development of a prototype for industrial application. This type of hot-wire foam cutter has numerous direct applications in the engineering production, design and prototyping phases. It is extensively used in a model aircraft-wing construction, architectural modeling and general prototyping.