Say you needed to make some reasonably large radius, curved cuts in
8/4 to 12/4 material and you wanted to minimize to the extent possible any loss to kerf. How would you do it? Not many options to my knowledge. Would a water jet be able to do this? Laser? Some sort of "string saw"? It's important that the cut be square throughout as well. High-tension, thin kerf bandsaw blades...an oxymoron? Scroll saw?
You didn't specify the material. Styrofoam--hot wire. Wood--bandsaw.
Say you needed to make some reasonably large radius, curved cuts in
8/4 to 12/4 material and you wanted to minimize to the extent possible any loss to kerf. How would you do it? Not many options to my knowledge. Would a water jet be able to do this? Laser? Some sort of "string saw"? It's important that the cut be square throughout as well. High-tension, thin kerf bandsaw blades...an oxymoron? Scroll saw? ================================================================================= Water jet for sure. I believe the laser would light it on fire having to go that thick but I don't know lasers.
You could rig an inert atmosphere for the laser with argon gas like in MIG welding. exclude Oxygen, no fire... Would the water jet leave enough water behind to swell the fibers?
If the material is wood and it's a relatively large radius you can use a relatively thin, but fairly wide (for the beam strength) blade on a bandsaw, with a relatively slow feed rate, for the 12/4... faster feed rates for thinner material. The slower feed rate should keep the cut straight through the thickness, and assuming the blade is square to the table, square.
John
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