Awesome Styrofoam

The best way to cut styrofoam is with a hot wire cutter. These tools usually have a single wire, but someone arranged a bunch of hot wires into a grid to produce a superbly satisfying video. Each time they set a sheet of styrofoam on top of the heated grid, it slides through like butter, creating dozens of foam cubes. We can only imagine the melted plastic fumes.

An electric hot wire cutter is the easiest way to get smooth cuts from styrofoam. LEGO mechanical expert Akiyuki Brick Channel took a basic hot wire cutter and mounted it in a machine that can spin a block of foam and move the wire to cut the kind of objects you might create on a lathe. It can also cut shapes from flat sheets of foam.

Not content with their customized Xbox Series X, PS5, and gaming PC, Nerdforge wanted to add a Nintendo Switch to their video-game-systems-as-buildings collection. So Martina got to work crafting a Zelda-themed Switch dock that looks like Hyrule Castle and an original painting of the world beyond its gates.

We recently saw a tiny remote-controlled airplane that could fit in the palm of your hand. The guys from Tail Happy Productions attempted to do the opposite and built an R/C plane that’s the same size as the real thing. They built the low-budget plane primarily from PVC pipe and styrofoam sheets. But will it even get off the ground?

When it comes to cups, disposable styrofoam ones are some of the most wasteful. Robinson Foundry has a solution to the problem – instead of making them out of difficult-to-recycle polystyrene, cast them out of molten metal. We love those aluminum packing peanuts too.

Working with styrofoam can be pretty tricky, especially the way that it tends to break. But that doesn’t stop artist Vinayak R, who makes detailed architectural structures out of the material. He uses hot-wire cutting, hand carving, and sanding to create the pieces for his models. He then spray paints them to bring out the details.