Foam Cutter

We are Otte Lowagie, Arnou Verfaillie and Mathijs Vanbeselaere from the university of Ghent campus Kortrijk. We study industrial engineer elektro-mechanics.

We designed this project in case to DIY. What follows is a brief summary of how to create a foam cutter who can make square waves out of a block EPS (expanded polystyren). It is divided into a few steps, with 3 particular parts: the frame and the horizontal and vertical movement.

NOTE: as material we propose MDF, so you can easily laser your parts. The machine is created for other materials as well but it increases the cost price and work. The other standard parts as screws you can easily get in a DIY-shop.

Enjoy!

The assembing of the horizontal movement can be divided in 2 steps. 
Parts of step 1:

Assembling part 1:

Parts of step 2:

Assembling part 2:

The horizontal movement of the foam cutter is connected with a table, who carries the EPS. The connection is discribed in another step, but for now the parts for the table:

Assembling table:

The table has to be moved, so a system is needed to transport it. In this case, we chose a wheelsystem. 
Wheelsystem - parts:

wheelsystem - assembling:

Again, as the horizntal movement, this part of the assembling is divided in 2 steps.
Parts of stap 1:

Assembling step1:

Parts step2:

Assembling step2:

The vertical movement has to pull up a filament that melts the square waves out of the EPS. This is assured by a railssytem, which is connected by a U-profile with the vertical component. In later steps we see the exact meaning of this. First of all, we make these railsystems.
Parts needed:

The assembling:

We can almost assemble these individual parts, just one small step left. The horizontal movement is connected with the table by a string. The vertical movement is also connected with the U-profile by a small string. The connection string-threaded spindle is made by pulley wheels. We create per movement 3 of these pulley wheels, which makes it possible to play with the size of the square waves.
Parts needed:

The assemblyschemes for the pulley wheels are similar.
This is an example:

The final step of the assembling can start. Now we just have to put all the individual steps together. We work in a few steps.
Parts step 1:

Assembling step1:

Assembling step 2:
(Add the bolt (nr 4))

Parts step3:

Assembling step3:

Assembling step 4:
(Add the length-flank with railsystem in step 3)

Parts step 5:

Assembling step 5:

Parts step 6:
(Note: Nr4 are the railsystems who are already integrated in the previous steps.)

Step 6 assembling:

Parts step 7:
(Add the horizontal movement and pulley wheels)

Assembling step 7:

Parts step 8:
(Note nr8-10 are the components of the vertical movement and are not added in the partslist)

Assembling step 8:

Parts step 9:
(Note: nr7 is the vertical movement, assembled in the previous step)

Assembling step 9:

Parts step 10:
(Note: nr 4 is the wheelsysteem, made in a previous step)

Assembling step 10:

So, after you added the table and if everything went fine, this will be your result.

As example: this is our foam cutter, cutting a square wave. 
NOTE: this is only woth 1 L-piece on the table.

Comment if you have questions ;)