Mounting router for foam

I was wondering if anyone had mounted a router of some sort to use the table for cutting foam, like for toolbox inserts?

For foam you can probably get away with one of the little 300-500W spindles - maybe even smaller. There won’t be much strain on the gantry and the Pro’s gantry won’t sag with the weight. The original CrossFire, however, will have a problem, partly due to sag as you get to higher X values, but also the stiffness might not be sufficient to get a good finish on the routing. If you’re not fussy, it will probably work. If you’re looking for quality profiles, you’ll need support on both ends of the X Axis travel.

Thank you for the reply! Another reason why I need one of them…I am trying to get a partner in one, soon I hope!

I would use a small laser for foam cutout. I bought one from the Creality web sight and mounted it to the pro and it engraves and cuts small materials fine like foam perfectly. I do have a spindle attached too the machine and I guess that would allow a pocket cut to foam but I haven’t tried that yet but my spindle should do it just fine with a really sharp tool.

Andy

Can you do a write up? I have thought of this to use my older laser setup and would love to adapt it.

Mine used an aduino? Setup.

How do you control laser on , off and intensity?

Thanks, sorry op for hijack :beer:

Right now I just turn my laser on and off. With the crossfire control box there is only relay on / off not ttl out so you cant control the laser intensity using the Langmuri. That said, the laser was actually mounted and working on my table before I actually got my Hypertherm working (Lovely Covid Shipping).

My type of laser, bought from the Creality web sight, uses 12DC power. All I needed to do was 3D print a mount and connect the power supply in series with the torch on off of the controller and it worked as expected. If you want to do things like pocket fills, you will need to enable that process in your CAM software.

I use SheetCam, reading the forms about Fusion mucking up the GCode by disabling rapid moves I choose to use SheetCam. With SheetCam, I enabled both the rotary and jet cutting options for my machine. That allows you to create the needed tools for pocket and contour functions in the software.

Here is where it gets a little more technical. The SheetCam post processor from Langmuir by default turns on the automatic THC by putting H1 when ever the PenDown move is created in the CAM process. Once that H1 is seen, the the controller wants to take control of the Z axis. My first thing was to manually change all H1 to H0 in the tap files, way to long and human error problems. By modifying the SheetCam post processor, I am now able to use the toolclass in SheetCam to either add z movements or not or add H1 or H0 based on the tool being used. So far works flawlessly for me. That allows me to define a tool and run the process and all the gcode comes out the way I want automatically. If I want to plasma, the THC and IHS all function as Langmuri intended I just basically made some if statements in the processor to say if it isn’t a jet cutting tool add Z movements which raise and lower the pen when needed and turn off the H1 THC.

When routing wood, even the tab options work perfectly for me. I really think it is the way the post processor should have been written in the first place. It takes nothing away from the plasma side but opens the door for other fun stuff.

I have used my laser to cut foam and it worked awesome, I told it to move slow like 15 IPM and had it do 3 passes and it cut 1 inch foam perfectly but if I was cutting something like a pocket with the laser, you could either do 2 things, try a router to cut the foam or make 2 cuts using 2 thicknesses. 1 piece 1 inch thick and another 1/5 inch thick. once cut the 1/5 inch would fit perfectly in to the 1 inch piece and essentially give you a pocket to put a tool in like a wrench.

All that said, I have a Crossfire Pro so it should handle the small stress I put on it with small tools. I don’t think any of this would work with out the Pro version.

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Thank you for that!