Balsa Stripper by workshopbob

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

The Balsa Stripper is used for producing strips of balsa wood in varying widths. It is possible to buy the wood ready cut but it is easy and cheaper to cut the strips from sheet wood when needed. It also means offcuts can be used for strip wood.
The stripper will cut up to 6mm /1/4" thickness of balsa wood up to a width of 30mm / 1 1/4". Some of the harder grades of balsa may not cut well at maximum thickness. The actual thickness that will pass under the cutter is 7mm. By removing the rear slider bolt and holding it together with the front bolt only a width of 50mm / 2" can be cut.
I drew the stripper parts in Fusion 360 and as this outputs .stl files at 90 degrees on their side I load the files into Cura and rotate them flat. I rotated the stripper body to put the length on the Y axis as it fits my printer better this way.
The scalpel blade holder has been drawn up as right handed (the angle the blade is held) so with the blade holder aligned on the X axis it can mirror flipped to provide a left handed version ((as I have used in the photos as I'm left handed)
Another blade holder version is included that holds the 9mm/3/8" wide blade (with snap off ends) that is in cheap throw away knives, other knife blades may fit this.
I printed mine as follows.
1 Stripper body in PLA at a layer height of 0.2mm at 80% fill.
1 slider in PLA at a layer height of 0.2mm at 80% fill.
1 blade holder in PLA at a layer height of 0.2mm at 100% fill. Ensure a left or right hand version is printed
2 slider washers in PLA at a layer height of 0.2mm at 100% fill.
Also to assemble the stripper the following will be needed.
2 - 4mm bolts x 20mm (I used button allen head bolts), washers and nuts to hold the blade holder to the slider.
2 - 5mm x 20mm Hex head bolts, washers and wing nuts to hold the slider to the body. Wing nuts for easy adjustment,
Swann Morton No 11 scalpel blade or suitable blade that fits one of the holders.
Addition - Following a make I've seen of this someone has added thumbnuts to replace the wing nuts which I thought was a rather good idea so I've added my version of these on here. The parts are printed in PLA with a layer height of 0.2mm and 80%fill. Two 5mm nuts are needed to fit in the recesses of the thumbnuts.
Update 26/09/18 - Following a request for a slightly shorter main body I've added 'Stripper body short' that is 20mm shorter (10mm each side) to fit smaller printers.