Circular cuts onto foamboard?

[Peter Normington]

Ryan if you are making a reasonable quantity, I would make a plywood template using a hand held router on a radial tether, then use template and router to cut the foam, should be no need to sand.

Peter

[Martin Pearson]

There are a couple of other ways you can try Ryan, firstly I have one of those rotary cutters which has an attachment for cutting circles. Secondly I have an engineering set which is used to cut valve gaskets, basically a metal bar which has a holder at one end into which you can fit a point and a holder at the other end into which you can fit a blade.

[Hugh Potter]

i just use westward plastics !!!

[Peter Normington]

Hugh dont know if you noticed but your avitar has come loose and slipped to one side 😀 😉

Peter

[Robert Lambie]

Band saw, jigsaw etc are all ways but not perfect… specialliy if your doing multiples. without going the CNC router way… the hand held one is an option.
i remember seeing a guy cutting circles from wood. he was using a hand held router but it been fixed upside down with a straight cutting bit facing up. he had a small nail hole in the centre of the wood and he basically turned the bit of wood moving into the router bit. obviously fixed in the middle it turned until he came back to the middle. it was very neat and looked pretty easy to setup. was a while ago now so sorry for not going into much detail… :lol1:

a bit of a bizarre one i remember, again, a while back…
a sign shop needed to cut circles or something circular. don’t remember exactly…
anyway… they got their car and jacked up the rear of it.
they took of one of the wheels and fixed an OLD wheel, minus the Tyre onto the car hub.
they then fixed a bit of plywood to the wheel….
from here they screwed on the decorative bit of wood or whatever they were cutting onto the plywood.
they setup a jig to hold some sort of cutter and…. Waite for it…. started the car and made the wheels at the back spin. they then used their cutter to move into the bit of wood to cut/shape it… obviously this is like a do-it-yourself lathe but it did work! :lol1:

cheapest and easiest way would be to call brimark (advert on homepage)
they have a pricing guide on their site. as its just a circle i guess its the same price as the letter "O".

[Ewan Roberts]

Hi Ryan,
a very easy way to cut circles is to get a scrap bit of foamboard about 50mm square and tape it down with masking tape to the sheet you want to cut. Then get another scrap bit of foamboard about 20mm wide and 400mm long,put two marks on the scrap 300mm apart and at one end put a map pin through the mark and right through the board and pin to the taped down bit of board, then put a scalpel through the other mark so the blade pokes through 5mm then start cutting out the circle which should end up 600mm. It takes a bit of practice. Don’t try doing it in one cut. Best to go round with the blade twice.I’ve done multiple circles over a metre wide this way with no mess or dust from routers or jigsaws.
Hope this makes sense.

Cheers Ewan.

[Robert Berwick]

Again depending on quantity:

Get a die cutting forme made (about £100) and get someone to die cut them for you. If there’s a lot of them I can’t think of a quicker way of doing them.

If you need any names and numbers pm me and I’ll dig them out for you.

Robert

[Nicola McIntosh]

quote comeonulinnets:

Get a die cutting forme made (about £100) and get someone to die cut

prices of die cutting have went through the roof, a lot more expensive than youve noted robert…ive stopped dealing with it…customers just wont pay for it anymore 😕 oops and ive just hijacked this thread…. :lol1:

nik