Can you cut great stuff foam with a hot wire?

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Can you cut great stuff foam with a hot wire?

Postby woodslanding » Wed May 26, 2021 12:10 pm

I am doing an XPS/Fiberglass project ('sleeper' in the build journal section) and would love to glue the panels with something that would cut with my hot foam cutter, for smoothing out all the edges afterwards. Of course I can sand it (and folks say great stuff sands pretty well) but I really hate dust, whereas I really like hot cutting.

Anybody tried this? I don't want to open my fresh can of great stuff, just to find out, but I guess it's just a $5 experiment if I have to :)

Failing that, anybody found a adhesive that you can wire cut?

Thanks in advance!
-eric
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Re: Can you cut great stuff foam with a hot wire?

Postby Pmullen503 » Wed May 26, 2021 8:20 pm

If you can plan where you're going hot wire you can tape off that area when you spread glue to make sure you won't be cutting through glue.

Be aware that even if you can hot wire through polyurethane glue, it can slow the cut and you'll get more melt back than the rest of the cut through unglued foam.
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Re: Can you cut great stuff foam with a hot wire?

Postby saltydawg » Wed May 26, 2021 9:46 pm

You need to be careful with polyurethane and heat. Its very bad to breath.

A electric carving knife will work well. So will a very fine toothed blade.
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