Testing foamcore settings with success

Beyond the Manual
1

Hi all -
a co-worker asked me to cut some frames out of foamcore to ship some samples out to a lab. After looking at testing folks had posted previously I ran a series of tests myself. Here’s what I found:

350 speed, 19 power: scored the top paper nicely
350 speed, 40 power: cut the top paper some but didn’t cut through even after multiple passes
350 speed, 60 power: after running 2 passes twice - perfectly cut through with no scorching and very minimal melting of the foam.

Maybe I could increase the power so I didn’t have to run the cuts twice but I’m a little wary of starting a fire or drastically melting the foam. With run times of less than a minute I’m ok with doing it twice! : )

Edit to add : foamcore was 0.2" thick

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Thanks for adding to our knowledge/experience data base.

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Thank you for giving us those numbers. I will put them in my log. It will give me a place to start if I cut any foam core.

Thanks again,
Terry

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Thanks, very useful info! Just to clarify, when you say you did two passes twice, do you mean a total of four passes?

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That’s correct - 4 passes in total. For what I was doing (basic rectangles) each pass was about 7 seconds cut time so total time was less than a minute.

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Thank you for this. I bought some foam core a couple months ago but haven’t done anything with it yet. This will help when I finally decide what I want to do with it!

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