Situation:

We needed to create a foam mold in order to use fiberglass and resin to create a nosecone for our Formula SAE car. In the past, we had attempted to manually use a hot wire, which proved too difficult to precisely shape the foam.

Solution:

We decided to create a CNC foam cutting machine. We used an online tutorial and pre-made CAD files to begin. We had to make alterations to the design to increase the bed size. Bearings were designed in SOLIDWORKS, T-Slots were ordered online, and a circuit had to be created to run current through the hot wire. The CNC was controlled by GRBL running off of an Arduino Uno.