Rule of thumb: if it looks flimsy, do not get it for cutting in thick foam. They are fine for cheap/thin foam, but that is it.

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I do not know about you, but I hate when I do not have the same tools as the content creator when I follow along on a guide or tutorial. I do not know what it is, but if everything goes wrong I cannot help but blame my tools.

You can save some bucks by going with a hot knife. It is easier to pack away, but you can get the same “knife through butter” feeling as the Proxxon. But, it will be less precise than the Proxxon.

The Proxxon hot wire cutter is just a thing of beauty. I realized a cheap cutter was not going to cut it (…), but I found the price tag of the Proxxon to be somewhat frightening. But after having asked around, read some online guides on making miniature terrain I knew I needed to get the wallet out.

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Coming from the abysmal experience of a cheap hot wire cutter, the difference was night and day. You can make the most crazy of cuts because the foam will just go through the wire like nothing.

This thing is much bigger than I expected. This is a good thing when it comes to using it, but you also need to store it someplace.

When you work with the same tools and paints as you can see in a video, you feel more confident that you can reproduce whatever it is that you see with your eyes.

I bought some pink foam second hand and a cheap hot wire cutter from a local hobby store. I thought I was ready to go, but hot dang I was wrong. The cheap “hot wire” cutter could barely cut 1 cm into the foam before it was stone cold.

The flimsy hot wire cutters you can see above were the ones I originally had. I cannot recommend those kinds of tools at all for terrain making.

If you want to make gloriously detailed terrain, precision and speed is king. This is what you get with as good a hot wire cutter as this.

I had wanted to get into building my own miniature terrain for years. Sure, there are options for buying terrain on the market but either they are expensive or they are… well not really what I wanted. Little did I know this path was leading my down a hole, where I at the end needed to fin the best hot wire cutter on the market.

I get it, I felt when I pulled my card out to get this bad beauty. But the price is something you need to be aware of. Are you serious about getting into creating terrain from foam? Maybe you should make some non-foam terrain if you are on the fence.

The Proxxon are a well known brand and they build things to last. This is not going to break the second time you pull it out from the shelf and it tells.

What I had not realized about the cheap cutters is that you are not going to be able to do precision work. With the way the Proxxon sits on the table with the grid and various extra rulers, you can make things price.

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Sure, a cheap hot wire cutter can do for your average cheap white polystyrene, but the hard foam (the ones you need for detailed terrain), well you need a great hot wire cutter.

I have decided that the big chunks of foam + the Proxxon cutter now stays in my room in our summer-home. It is simply too big (and a bit ugly) to have in the apartment (where most of my stuff hobby is hidden in small drawers).

Our online store is your easy one-stop source for all things metalworking, and we’re positive we can help you find the perfect quality solutions for all your machine shop needs.

Copyright © 2023 Age of MiniaturesWe are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn commissions by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. When you click on and/or make a purchase through a link to Amazon placed on this website, we may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. That way we can keep making the content you enjoy. Read our Affiliate Link Policy here.

Once I got it in my hands I knew I had made the right decision. This thing melted the foam I could not get the cheap cutter to even dig just a little bit into. This thing just works.