Easiest Mess Free Foam Cutter Ever

by MakinThings in Workshop > Tools

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Easiest Mess Free Foam Cutter Ever

easiest mess free foam cutter ever

The goal of this ible is to show you how to make a simple and inexpensive foam cutting blade. I've already posted how to make hot wire cutters, and there are hot knives and scoring method, but I have found what is probably the easiest and cheapest way to cut long perfect piece for uses like home insulation.

Giveaway: follow my instructables and YouTube channels and post an "I've made it" picture to get the free pro membership voucher I got when this instructables was featured.

Material

Foam Cutting Blade- nateruak.png

What you will need to make your own foam cutting blade is...

How It Works

Easy foam cutters demo: hot wire and saw

The end goal is to make a knife style edge on the blade so that it sices, but without the teeth it can't just rip chunks out. That will get the cut started. For the slicing, we rely on the heat from the friction, this is why we don't just go really slow with a toothed blade. Teeth on blades have a kirf and gullet to help clear chips and let air cool the blade. With no teeth, we will be heating up the blade in the foam.

The video above demos my two kinds of foam cutters, each being used for their strength.

Grind the Teeth Away

Foam Cutting Blade- grind.png
Find a spot to secure the blade in place, and start grinding at a 45 degree angle. Flip it, and repeat. At this point you should now be able to remove the teeth.

Smooth and Sharpen

Foam Cutting Blade 06 .jpg
Grind dead on to the bumps left of what the teeth were. After, give it another pass at 45 degrees to give it back its sharp-ish edge.

Cut Foam

Foam Cutting Blade 11 .jpg
Foam Cutting Blade- cut.png
easiest mess free foam cutter ever Part 2: the biggening

That's it, you can now do perfect, long, mess free cuts in foam blocks. I also made a 10 inch version, which you can see in action in the video above.