After a few days of testing in foam I really had enough of it (especially the noise), and I decided to visualise the part in 3D on the computer before committing it to foam. Like that I save on foam and noise, ideally it would also save time, but it took me a few days to get this working. Still, in the end I come out ahead for every test that I make is now seconds.
The program is an extended version of the one that made the jobfile for the cutter, it now includes a 3D window which you can use to drag the blade profile around to see it from different angles.
It already helped me to spot one error in the data file, the 'closing' of the profile wasn't done properly resulting in a step on the leading edge. That's fixed now, and it looks good on the screen.
The program is still very much a work in progress, most settings are hardcoded except for the ones that need frequent change (stations, tsr), I do intend to complete it but for now this works for me.
The learning curve of getting this 3D thingy done in python was quite steep, but the result is awesome, real time dragging of the blade, as well as zooming and panning. OpenGL is neat. Another neat feature is the tsr 'slider', you can see the shape change in realtime as you change the tsr. Very educational.
If you are interested in what it looks like here is a picture:
