Miscellaneous

Foam Cutter Circle Jig

Everyone wants a Proxxon, I blame Jeremy at Black Magic Craft for doing shiny things with his. But I don’t have a Proxxon. I have a cheap little foam cutter I got from eBay years ago for about £30. And it does the job, but it means I can’t use the nifty tools from Shifting Lands.

Cheap and cheerful foam cutter
cheap and cheerful

The main thing I wanted was a circle cutting jig. Being able to cut neat circles comes up all the time, but I never had a decent way to do it. So I thought I’d implement my own circle jig into the bed of the cutter.

Super simple, I drew a line at a diagonal from the wire (to allow for the largest radii), then marked it with centimetre increments.

Holes marked on the foam cutter for the radius

Then I drilled a hole at each mark. Finally with a little bit of dremel work, a small 3mm head rivet became a small pin. It sits surprisingly securely in the holes, but the sharpened pin makes a nice clean pivot point in the foam.

The magic rivet
Rivet in place on foam cutter

The only real flaw is I can only cut even numbered diameters, so no 23cm circles for me. But it’s a minor issue. I guess if I really wanted to I could draw a line on the other diagonal and mark it at centimetres, but start at 1.5cm instead of 1. Then I could cut a 11.5cm radius circle.

Foam cutter cutting circles!

Yes, that is one of the failed cuts from my Victorian Town streets :). Never throw anything away, a hobbyist’s mantra.

Foam cutter can now cut circles! Nice and simple, and free, best kind of hacks I reckon.

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