Trimming the foam

Post date: Dec 17, 2014 10:47:53 PM

To trim the foam, I tried using a belt sander. But that didn't work at all. I wanted a nice straight cut. So I designed a hot wire foam cutter. I cut a meter of thin magnet wire, and measured the resistance to be one ohm with my multimeter. With my five volt power supply, a one ohm resistor draws five amps, according to Ohm's law. Since the power supply maxes out at twenty amps, I was well within the abilities of the power supply. I grabbed an old chair from my garage, taped the magnet wire across the arm rests, and soldered it to the power supply. Lastly, I plugged it into a power strip with an on/off switch. When I switched it on, the wire heated up and I moved a piece of foam board through it, slicing it like butter. Wow. I was very impressed with myself. From there, trimming the foam was a breeze. I couldn't capture the magnet wire in a picture because it was so thin and hard to see, so below is a picture highlighting the straight trim.

-Jeremy