OP827 wrote:Philip wrote:OP here is the close up pic's of the cutter. At the position I have the wire notched in. You need to hold the clamp at a 45 degree angle to the foam your cutting.
In this pic you can see I just wrapped the Ni-chrome around that machine screw. The clip is just to keep the end from unwinding.
This is a clever cutter design for this shaving task, I like that! Now I see why the 12V manual charger would not have enough voltage to make the wire hotter. your Ni-Cr wire looks quite thinner than a common steel MIG wire. Thanks for sharing your build methods here. May I ask you whether you checked the surface, after the foam was cut flash with frame, with a long straight edge and was is flat, how good was it? I am considering using this method too.. It could be simplier than planing the foam.
Another question on epoxy gluep you posted above, did you thicken your epoxy to fix it to ply with micro balloons of other filler?
Thanks,
Oleg
The Ni-chrome I am using is .030" size. My charger is a larger one. It needs a battery hooked to it to go into charge mode. The Ni-chrome just didn't have to correct resistence a battery would have to turn on the full charge circuits. A cheap small charger with little built in controls might do it. I didn't have one to try. The longer the wire the more power you need. I was cutting a little over 15" wide on that frame work.
I was going to try mig wire. The wire I had wouldn't wrap tight around the machine screws. I thought about a wire terminal for connections. then I just pitched the idea and went back to Ni-chrome.
the Ni-chrome I have cost $3. for 25' plus $1.25 for shipping. To me its not worth trying to play to much with mig wire.
I did throw a straight edge across the frame work. No high spots above the frame. The wire did dip down in the middle a small amount on a couple of panels. Nothing I would worry about.
I am using Total boat epoxy. Of all the epoxy's on the market. It has the highest viscosity of all the brands on the market. I didn't need to thicken it. This stuff is thick enough you can do uphill layouts if you want. That's one of the reasons I picked this brand. I am sure I will have some vertical layouts some where during this build.
When I was epoxying those panels. I threw down a heavy coat. It took about 10 minutes to coat one panel. I went back over and hit the dry looking spots then dropped the foam into the epoxy and weighted it down.