Sick of throwing out boxes full of useless, exotically-shaped, styrofoam packing materials? You could always take a leaf from artist Michael Salter’s book and construct a massive meditating robot sculpture from left-over styrofoam, which he calls styrobots.
Sick of throwing out boxes full of useless, exotically-shaped, styrofoam packing materials? You could always take a leaf from artist Michael Salter’s book and construct a massive meditating robot sculpture from left-over styrofoam.
MAKE author Bob Knetzger shows how to built a foam-cutting rig with a length of nichrome wire and a model train transformer.
We have covered at least one DIY CNC hot wire cutter before, and commercial versions are manufactured by several companies including Hotwire Direct, Streamline Automation, and FoamLinx. This machine, built in 2006 by students under Dr. René Straßnick at the Technical University of Berlin, has two translational axes and a third, rotational axis consisting of a turntable to which the foam substrate is attached. Parts from an old dot-matrix printer were used to make the Cartesian robot.
Make these giant Styrofoam and sequined holiday lights.
Our fabulous new projects library, Make: Projects, is getting bigger every day, with over 100 projects from the pages of MAKE and CRAFT magazines and from makers and crafters like you. We need your help to grow it even more, so if you haven’t already checked it out, come on over to makeprojects.com, sign up […]
There’s still time to start making or just watch this week’s Weekend Project: 5-Minute Foam Factory. You can view the video here, or subscribe in iTunes to get all our Weekend Projects and PDFs delivered each week.
