WIRECUT CHESS QUEEN TUTORIAL
Streamline Automation’s FROGWire is a solid, reliable, highly-configurable 5-axis hotwire foamcutter. The 5th axis is a rotary axis, that turns the machine into a sort of hotwire lathe. It doesn’t create perfectly round spindles like you would get from a traditional lathe; instead the output has facets that approximate roundness. More facets = more roundness.
A perfect project to take advantage of these parameters is an oversized chess piece.
The Chess Queen tutorial provided the single curve required to create the piece (in DXF format, as required by the FROGWire cutter) and detailed, graphically illustrated instructions as to how to configure the machine in 3-axis mode, and program it to perform the same cut 10 times, rotating the blank 36° between cuts.
Users were encouraged to experiment by creating their own queen, with a different number of facets.
ABOVE: The nature of a CNC wirecutter, which can only cut in straight lines, ensures the Queen has a suitably ornate crown.
For many of the tutorial projects, I made short timelapses of the processes, for further illumination of the lesson.
