I Have been HotWired!! PIC HEavy!! Hotwire Cutter

[The Zigman]

Ok not really, but I got bored and built this nifty little hot wire cutter out of some spare parts and scrap wood I had lying around...

First I built the frame...

 

[The Zigman]

Preparing for the wiring...

Then I drilled a hole for the cutting wire, and reinforced the top piece to keep it square...

And added the tensioning mechanism up top, to keep the wire tight...

 

[The Zigman]

Wiring it up..

Then I wired it all up...
its pretty basic.

The cutting wire is Nichrome resistor wire, it is made for hotwire cutting.

The Light dimmer controls the input power to the transformer, thus controlling the output power to the cutting wire...

Note that the doorbell transformer in the pix smoked out, and I had to replace it with a halogen light transformer (60 Watts, was $12 at Menards.)

 

[The Zigman]

Test cuts

So then I made some test cuts, and built a fence for it...

 

[The Zigman]

The I tried it out...

First I was just goofing around..


Then I used it for what I wanted it for inthe first place. To cut foam for shipping boxes. Cut enough 3/4 foam to insulate 12 shipments, in like 10 minutes...

All in all, I spent about $25 on this, 8 for the dimmer, 12 for the transformer, and a couple bucks for the eyebolts & wingnuts

 

[Virtuoso2K12]

try to see if you can do your name with it with your fingers

 

[The Zigman]

try to see if you can do your name with it with your fingers

I did...
See the pix above?

 

[BoCoMo]

Very cool zig!

 

[Debra Mark]

very talented Zig!!!

Can you cut a donut with that??? lol!
D

 

[bettabrat]

Nice job man, this looks pretty easy and has got to really handy for those ppl who ship often. Thanks for sharing