Thought I’d give EVA foam building a try. Started building “The Wasp” for my daughter. I love the accuracy the MPCNC gives. Had the laser add the honeycomb detail. As I get more experience I’m going to try using the MPCNC with a Dremel to crave some shapes, 3D printing on the foam before cutting, and have a wood burner cut patterns on the foam.
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So many questions! Looks amazing! I will be back after work to ask some!
That thing is awesome! Care to share the process? Are all the pieces cut from the MPCNC?
Here’s were I started Wasp Foam Helmet
I bought his template and imported it into Inkscape tweaked the lines a little and generated the gcode with J Tech Laser Extension.
Check the code in NCViewer and edited it in Notepad ++ if needed.
The Laser did the cutting. I also added the the Hex pattern on the top of the helmet with the laser I think it looks good there. This is my first attempt with foam. I usually work work with paper then fiberglass it. The foam builds come along much faster.
WOW!!!
Incredible! Looks really good. What kind of laser are using; how powerful is it? One pass or multiple?
The monstrosity you see in the background is a NUBM44-81 running at 7.5v ~6amps. Temperature controlled with a 15 amp Peltier cooler and CPU liquid heat sink that I had from another project. 10 amp PID LPLDD from Opt Lasers to control the Laser and cooler. I can run that thing all day and not overheat. I built that in one of my “I want to learn how everything works” phases. That being said I also built one to 2.8w lasers described on the site and that work just about as well. The focal point is much finer on the 2.8w lasers. Both lasers take more than one pass to cut 5mm and 6mm foam the feed rates will just be different.
Do you offset the cut by any amount? I know it tends to shrink a little bit after being exposed to heat/laser.
No, I don’t use any offset. There is some shrinkage but not enough to make a difference. I did find that air assist makes a big difference in how clean the cut is.
OMG, please tell me you do this for a living?!
Na, retired three weeks, keeps me from roaming the streets.
I found the sweet spot for etching a patterns on the foam. Power setting of 45 with a feed rate of 3000. Yup 3000, makes me smile every time I run something.
That is so insanely awesome.
Wow! That is amazing!
The patterns look amazing
Great work!
Well she won the costume contest!
Unreal, I would love to see some vids of that pattern being burnt into that foam that is awesome! Well done
Neil
I was thinking of making a video of the process. I’m sure there’s ways to improve it that I don’t know about. The shoulders actually required a masking with card stock because the patterns flowed over each other.
