in today's video I challenge myself to the quickest possible build of a
full-size full-featured foam cutting table with randoms source from around
the shed all in under 20 minutes we've got another build but a quick build
also cat video 3 is coming sometime soon but today is a practical build what
practical yes that's right serious serious build no around this is gonna
save you time and money and energy and carbon you're gonna you're gonna get all
the carbon this project is basically the result of me needing to build this
anyway and I thought if I'm gonna be building things some eyes I'll be
sharing it with you guys hmm so farewell back when I was planning to build the
cooler drink how do I be doing lots of work with foam for that video and
probably others in the future because foam is pretty handy you can shape it
and sand it and throw stuff at it and just talk to it about your feelings and
stuff so I figured building a foam table cutter would be pretty handy looking
into it you can buy them but they're about $600 then I remembered I'd seen
some videos online where people have made their own the king of random has a
popular video on the topic as well as some other channels and they're all
great builds you should check them out but they're pretty involved designs and
I didn't want to spend days making that when I had to spend a lot of time making
a ridiculous flying cooler so the challenge build something that costs
less or nothing is possibly more versatile than the ones I've seen online
and something that could be made in under 20 minutes challenge accepted and
you know it's gonna be eternity one style always keep in mind with my videos
I have no formal training in electronics or electrical stuff or engineering for
that matter so take what I say with a grain of salt and let's go build some
things right so the first ingredient well I figured that would be a table
seeing it's a table foam cutter a big table as needed so I could slide some
full-sized sheets of foam across it when you have your table ready
maybe check under it just to make sure that it's a table under there as well
yep good top and bottom table consistency here so years ago I grabbed
this old shop display fixture that was being shucked out because it was full of
some handy aluminium squared Shoob it had these corner connectors that came
with it and I'm gonna make use of them to looking further into this for this
video it looks like this is some kind of standard system for snapping bits of
aluminium together which is interesting but it seems a little pricy considering
it's fairly flimsy so if you haven't been been diving at your local
supermarket lately you might want to improvise something else but only use
these just because this is gonna be a lot quicker
within the plastic connectors I've grabbed the closest thing to a right
angle that I could find and I've hammered that into the end of the tube
and then I've also shoved another connector into the other end of the tube
just for a bit more strength now we need to find a square piece of conductive
metal that will fit snugly around this square tube that's too small that's
about the same size that's way too big no that's round
that's a tailpipe but just when I thought I was out of options then I
noticed the Shedd roller door track fits perfectly around it I'm not quite ready
to pull this shut down just yet for material you know I still have to fix
the central door locking in my car but luckily I'm a material hoarder and I
have a fair bit left over from the shed build with your set square measure and
mark yourself a short bit and then cut that off you're then going to want to
file all the edges of this piece of metal especially on the inside now with
the arm you whipped up earlier you just put that against the edge of the table
then grab yourself an F clamp and clamp it on you can probably see now if I try
to clamp this without the plastic fitting in the end it would just crush
the aluminium flat this next bit is importance
get yourself a hacksaw and chop away any little bits of bird aluminium out of the
corner so each section of tube doesn't have contact with the other piece we now
have ourselves a hot wire arm with a pretty decent reach I would say on par
with a professional unit and the slider we made fits and skates along the tube
quite nicely a right grab yourself a straightedge that you can use to square
against the clamp done using that as a guide I've then marked the table under
the end of the arm with your drill and a small drill bit we're going to drill
ourselves a hole in the middle of the table
you know if you're using your dining room table and you haven't asked your
parents or wife's permission they're probably not gonna notice it's a small
hole in the old box of random electrical wire I've got myself some figure eight
cable which should do nicely you want to use something that's fairly thick like
this you're also gonna need a small extension spring I didn't really have
anything that was small but I found the cable relief on a headphone jack was
perfect plus it was shiny and you know how I love shiny with your spring if you
don't have any loops in the end you're gonna need to bend some in it so it can
actually be hooked onto stuff I have now gone and put a hole through my slider
now this actually worked out pretty well for me because this roller door track
has this folded and lip on it if you're not working with material like this
you're gonna need to work around it somehow I don't really know how maybe
just don't cut fine what the first place I solve all the problems holy grab
yourself a little pan head self tapper or tech screw pre screw that in so you
cut yourself a nice little thread then pull it out and you can mount the spring
onto this slider we've now got ourselves a piece of roller door scrap with a
screw in the side and a broken bit of headphone connected dangling off it it's
been a good day in the Turner shed so far a good day it appropriately filed
away in the old wire and cable box I have myself a spindle of nichrome wire
this stuff's pretty cheap it's made as resistance wire so it basically gets hot
when current passes through it it's made of a mix of Chrome and Nickelodeon or
nickel only I forget now and spoil yourself a bit of this wire and we're
gonna thread that through our table hole then you just need to kick your tripod
and then twist the wire onto the loop of the spring waiting now get the
figure-eight cable from earlier and split that into two separate wires
you're gonna need to grab yourself a terminal like so and then I want to
crimp that onto the end of the cable if you don't have these terminals you can
just strip the wire back even further and twist it into a loop and will do the
job then under the table drill another show
hole next to the first one but you don't need to go all the way through if you do
you're probably pushing your luck and your parents or wife are most likely
gonna notice using a very short self tapper I've then screwed that terminal
down to the table or up some under it you know you get it I'll flip this shot
so it makes more sense or or less sense Kristen will fix this up and then attach
your nichrome wire with the other bit of figure 8 cable I've measured this out to
reach the top corner of the arm cut it and then I've slapped on another crimp
terminal just to be clear this is the other way and not the other end of the
wire we just attached under the table different wire different wire wire then
screw that terminal into the top section of the arm here's a 90 degree angle okay
just waiting on the screw to go in maybe grab yourself a coffee oh there we go
again once the thread is pre tapped then take the screw out and put the terminal
underneath on the other end of the figure-eight cable strip this back white
bar then with an old car battery that you have in storage which you should
have started doing by now if you've watched any of my past videos grab that
and put it under the table you can also use a kid's bike or screw to battery if
you have one on hand now if you want to connect these wires to a large car
battery without using proper battery terminals just get a couple of cheapo
plastic clamps and clamp the wires straight on as you may have noticed I
didn't worry about wiring a switch into this unit simply because that'll be
extra time and effort which I don't have so be aware as soon as you connect this
to the battery your hot wire should be up and cranking and light lightsaber the
chip out of anything that comes in contact with it now you can also see the
beauty of this slide connector here the whole top section of the tube is
energized so then you can slide the bracket to any place to adjust the angle
of the wire and when you let it go it just grips itself into place for
achieving some more extreme angles just loosen the table clamp off a bit and lay
the entire arm over finally using a set square I've set the hot wire nice and
straight and we're really give it a test alright that works reasonably well
only thing is why isn't as hot as I want it probably partly because the length of
the resistance wire however I've also realized the spring itself is acting as
a resistor which is an unnecessary waste of energy a bit like building a cooler
drone to work around this I tested by passing the spring with a bit of scrap
wire which was perfect and now runs nice and hot but also with every problem is
an opportunity or a YouTube video in putting a piece of wire in permanently I
had the idea that if I used an alligator clip then I'll be able to slide it up
and down which will vary the resistance and in turn gives us a simple but
effective heat controller all without having to do lots of wiring and thinking
and like that slide it all the way down and it cranks up the heat
slide it back up and the wire runs cooler beautiful she's cutting through
thick chunks now Huracan foam is on a dinner menu tonight
the only other small problem I had to resolve was a wire burning through the
table you know that always sucks so I just chucked a glass fuse under the wire
to try and insulate it a bit which seems to have done the trick quite nicely
sorry how do you switched the unit on and off if you weren't ooh you could
make yourself a foot controller or something or you can just do what I do
in the end how does our crudely whipped up foam table cutter perform oh yeah
that's some nice foam cutting if you're wondering cutting this is even more
satisfying than it looks if you build this for no other reason
just to randomly swivel cut up some bits of foam at some time well spent but if
he's still doubtful about the quality of such a doggedly crafted machine you know
the cooler drone bill worked out pretty sweet and that had some complex angles
and stuff in there thank you heaps for watching and Cheers guys for all the
support lately that it's come through on my videos and in the comments it keeps
me going making these ridiculous things my name is Craig Turner YouTube channel
he's turned 81 subscribe and click the bell because my videos are sporadic so
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and perhaps check out my patreon if you might be able to help out on there that
would be great too and I'll catch you in the next video