4 axis hot wire foam cutter

[khowlette]

I have built a 4 axis hot wire foam cutter which I use for building wings and fuselages for radio controlled airplanes.  I've spent quite a bit of money of software to generate the gcode mainly from www.devcad.com.  I get quite a few hits on my website from people building one as well and the software is always the biggest problem for most people in that they can't try it without having paid for it. My website is here with more details   http://www.rckeith.co.uk/cnc-hot-wire-foam-cutter/

I wonder if Fusion would be able to generate the code with a new post processor.  I've seen some plugins which can import airfoils so getting the shapes in wouldn't to hard.  Is this possible.  Not sure if more than a post processor would be needed.

Thanks

Keith

[HughesTooling]

I'd guess this is similar to 4 axis wire erosion and has been requested here. Autodesk doesn't seem that interest in implementing for some reason. I either use BobCAD or Rhino with a python script I've written.

Here's an example. Part in Rhino right side of picture back plotted code on the left.

Do you just draw a profile for each face of the foam and does your machine take care of the offsets or does the CAM program the positions of the heads. On my wire eroder the the gcode for each pair of axis is on the faces of the block and the control takes care of the offset to each head.

[khowlette]

Hi 

The software I use takes care of all the offset etc and is pretty good,  So I just give select an airfoil profile and give some basic dimension and it generates the g-code.  Which is fine for me but its not free for guys wanting to have a try first.  I suppose the demand for it isn't high enough to warrant potential sales they would get.  Most of us doing this are just RC hobbyist trying to do things as economically as possible.  Since posting I'v found this  http://swarfer.co.za/rc/wire/index.php which is fairly basic but looks like it will do the job for free.

Thanks for the response

Keith

[HughesTooling]

Don't know if you might find the back plotter I use useful, it has a setup for foam cutters. If you use cutter comp G41\42 it's good to see the offset's the correct side.

http://www.nc-corrector.inf.ua/index_EN.htm

Mark

[MisiuPL]

Hi guys.

@HughesTooling did something changed about 4 axis hot wire cutter support in Fusion360?

I'm planning to build such cnc to build some RC models.

I'm aware that this probably isn't requested too often, but I think many users would benefit from a built-in solution.

[Anonymous]

Yeah I'm highjly interested in CNC foam cutting as well. currently we are  using an realy old laptop running dos and an old piece of software

[HughesTooling]

There's another thread in the HSM forum for 4 axis wire EDM that you should all vote on as well.

Mark