Cut 'n Create: A kid-friendly CNC Hot Wire Foam Cutter
For my senior mechanical engineering design project, my group was paired with Parts and Crafts, a family maker space located Somerville Massachusetts. Parts and Crafts was looking for a safe and easy way for their students, ages 7 to 14, to incorporate insulation foam into their projects. While foam is inexpensive and readily available, it was messy, dangerous, and time consuming for young students to work with using the tools available at Parts and Crafts.
To solve this problem, our group designed a Hot Wire foam cutter that students could manually control with a joystick or upload SVG files to for automated cutting. Over the course of one semester, we followed the engineering design process to create the best possible foam cutting solution for Parts and Crafts.
To solve this problem, our group designed a Hot Wire foam cutter that students could manually control with a joystick or upload SVG files to for automated cutting. Over the course of one semester, we followed the engineering design process to create the best possible foam cutting solution for Parts and Crafts.
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An integral part in our engineering design process was fully scoping the problem, and understanding the unique user needs and corresponding engineering requirements that a digital fabrication tool for young students demanded. Safety was a major consideration made during the construction of the CnC. Ensuring that students would be safe from the hot probe and any fumes produced during the cutting process, while also enabling them to independently use the machine was our main challenge. The final solution consisted of a hot wire probe mounted on an XY plotter.
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A pull out drawer was used as the bed of the CnC which enabled students to safely and easily insert new pieces for cutting and remove their final products. Large LED illuminated buttons, LCD Screen, and Joystick provided young users with an easy to use physical interface for controlling the machine. The brain of the Cut ’n Create is a microprocessor called the Me Orion board. This board was programmed using a combination of scratch and Arduino. The code maps the movement of the joystick to stepper motor values, which moves the probe in the desired direction. The code also tells the machine what to do if it hits a limit switch, or if any of the buttons are pressed. A carbon filter fan was installed in the back of the machine neutralize fumes produced during cutting.
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The most rewarding part of the project was getting to deliver the CnC to Parts and Crafts, where it is used by staff and students to bring ideas from imaginations to reality.
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