CNC cutting Polystyrene – help needed, please?

[Ian Johnston]

I haven’t tried polystyrene as I’d imagine the balls would break away rather than cut, but I have routered the blue and yellow expanded urethane boards which you get for insulating walls etc with good success , we even use it to make moulds to create fibreglass blanks from

[Simon Worrall]

James
I cut this a bit
1.Polystyrene comes in many different densities. The higher the density the better the cut.
2. I use a half inch four flute spiral upcut for polystyrene that I think came from Onsrud. It is about 150mm long.
3. Make sure your dust collector is working well. This stuff gets everywhere and sticks to the walls, machine, and your face!
4. Make sure also your dust collector is well earthed. The static is intense and sparks could generate a nasty explosion in your collector.
5. Rotate the spindle at high speed, and cut quite fast. I usually cut in 10-20mm passes, depending on material density.
6. Make sure your bit is sharp. You want to cut it not tear it.
7. Use a vacuum hold down. This material can flex quite a bit when cutting.

Simon.

[Unknown Member]

Simon

Thanks for this…Really helpful and very detailed.

Many Thanks

James

[Adrian Hewson]

Use Hot wire method beautiful finish or send it to the pros http://www.cncpolystyrene.co.uk/

[Unknown Member]

Funny you should mention that company Adrian I’m seeing them on Monday to pick up some material.

They said CNC routing is fine for what I want to do as they do it all the time

Granddad Adrian your out of touch….That pension book is looming! LOL

Hope all is well by the way!

[Robert Lambie]

I have used Fran Hollywood for letters. know of lots of other board members that have recommended him too.
found him to be very helpful and rushed a job through for me at the last minute. very harpy with his work.
http://www.madeinhollywood.ie/

You can see the 3D letters he created for me for the UKSG training Truck at Fespa in the picture below.

[Unknown Member]

Ok so here is an update on how this turned out!

As you can see the results were fantastic…We even did a bit of engraving, the High density polystyrene worked a treat!

Thanks to Jeff @ CNC POLYSTYRENE for supplying us with the material – Well worth the 200 mile run trip, our local supplier couldn’t get it to us till Friday and we needed it today.

The samples we cut were done in 2 passes using a tool purchased from complete cnc solutions (Tekcel)

hardly any mess at all the dust extractor worked a treat.

As you can see from the pictures we cut some small text and some 1.2m letters in the last picture.

---

Attachments: