Nichrome Hot Wire Cutter

Acrylic sheet is always a go to for me when building something.

Nichrome hot wire cutter.

The device consists of a thin metal wire often made of stainless steel or nichrome or a thicker wire preformed into a desired shape which is heated via electrical resistance. It s relatively cheap durable and able to be used for a variety of applications. Nichrome a contains 80 nickel and 20 chromium. The tension factor.

In this video i will show you how to make a bow polystyrene cutter out of pvc pipe and a household ac power adapter this is a handy little foam slicer if you. These cutters are expensive to buy but you can build your own inexpensive hot foam cutter that uses an automotive battery charger as a power supply. Hot wire foam cutter power supply design. A 12 piece of 14 gauge nichrome wire requires only 1 9 volts but almost 12 amps.

The nichrome cutting wire reaches the temperature of a few hundred celcius degrees in few seconds. Type a and type c are the common types of nicr coils. Nichrome wire nicr is the optimal cutting wire choice for foam cutting equipment for a variety of reasons but particularly because it is resistant against corrosion and oxidation at very high temperature. There are two readily available types of wire nichrome a nichrome c.

Nichrome hot wire cutter for acrylic. Bend the nichrome wire three inches from each end. You can read about all kinds of things people do to power their hot wire foam cutter including things like running 110v through a light bulb in series with the foam cutter battery chargers dimmer switches variacs wall warts batteries and so on. Nichrome is an alloy of nickel and chromium.

Nichrome wire has high tensile strength and a high melting point. For the past few years i ve been using a dremel rotary tool to cut the plexiglass which gets messy. The answer is a hot foam cutter which uses a heated wire to slice through the foam. Larger diameter wires are also used for very long cutters such as 8 or 10 feet.

All metals expand with heat so the nichrome wire at cutting temperature also expands and gets longer. It has high corrosion resistant and melting point hence it is used in electric appliances and tools. Nichrome wire is the optimal wire choice for foam cutters for a variety of reasons but particularly because it is resistant against corrosion and oxidation at very high temperature. Nichrome is wound in coils to a certain electrical resistance and current is passed through it to produce heat.

Nichrome c contains 60 nickel 16 chromium 24 iron. Insert the ends through a hole at one end of each metal.