CNC Hot wire Foam cutter

This article is going to document my attempt at building a hot wire CNC (Computer Numerical Control) foam cutter.

Why build one? a few reasons

• In my build of the VC10 I’ve had to make many templates for various parts.  The first few aren't so bad  but after a while it gets a bit tedious. A CNC cutter would eliminate this
• I recently visited Mike Black of Green Air Designs   to see his VC10 and had a very pleasant time.  Mike showed me his laser cutter working and showed me his other machines.  This has inspired me to build a hot wire CNC
• It’s really quite feasible to do and a quick search on the net show many DIY CNC machines, most tend to be routers
• I’m always been fascinated by CNC but never thought it would be possible and I really got very interested in it now.

After a lot of surfing and some real good advice off some CNC forums ( http://www.mycncuk.com/ and http://www.cnczone.com/) I decided on building this design from http://www.drayconstruction.com/foamstuffs/ 

	I  purchased the plan and have nearly everything to build it.  MDF came from an office clearout
	Stepper motors and electronics I purchased from Ebay

I’ve decided to use threaded rod for the lead screws, because I believe the accuracy required in foam cutting is not critical.  These came from http://www.screwfix.com/prods/98942/Fixings/Injection-Fixing/BZP-Threaded-Rod-M12-Pack-of-5

Power supply is going to be 2 ATX PSU wired in series to give 24V a nice article here on how to do this http://www.procooling.com/index.php?func=articles&disp=52&pg=1