For this week’s lab we had to plasma cut two states and then post process them. Naturally, I chose to cut out the great state of Pennsylvania. The first step to plasma cutting is to set up the file to cut. This is a very simple process and took me only a couple of minutes. Once I setup the file with a male entry, I imported it to the Torchmate cutting program. When I imported the file I had the option to set the speed so I set it to forty inches per second. All the steps up to this point were very simple. The next step, however, was slightly more labor intensive. In order maximize the amount of material that can be used from one sheet, I wanted to cut my state out as close as possible to where other states had been cut out. To achieve this, I reset the origin and then ran test runs to see if the cut would work. This took a few minutes to do for each cut but was worth it because it allowed for more of the metal sheet to be used. After completing all of these steps I finally had two Pennsylvanias.

Once I had my two states cut out I needed to remove the dross, so I went downstairs to file it. After painstakingly filing for ten minutes I removed the dross from one of my states. As I was about to begin working my second state, Carlos told me I should use a power sander to remove the dross. Using the power sander cut my dross removal time from ten to two minutes. It also made the piece look better because there were no random scratch marks on it. Due to this, I used the power sander on the first state I had filed to remove all of the scratches.

Next, I decided that I wanted to spray paint my states orange. I failed miserably at this. I did not apply an even coat of spray paint so they looked very unprofessionally done.

At this point I decided to abort the mission and start over so I plasma cut two new Pennsylvanias. This time I used the grinder to remove the dross. The grinder, however, did not remove all of the dross so I had to file them after as well.

I wanted to try something new this time so instead of spray painting the states I sandblasted them. When I first tried to use the sandblaster, the tube that sucks in the sand was not in the sand so I was essentially shooting the piece with pressurized air. Once I fixed this, I successfully sandblasted both of my pieces and had my final product!

I was not done yet. I still had the pieces that I spray painted so using sand paper I painstakingly removed the paint.

I figured out that the larger the grain of sandpaper the better is was for removing paint. Once I had all of the paint removed I used tape to make an “X” on both pieces. I then spray painted them neon pink. Once I removed the tape I had a pink Pennsylvania with an “X” through it.

Doing this project further reinforced the fact that people learn more from failure than success. By failing the first time when spray painting Pennsylvania, I learned a new method for removing dross and how to use the sandblaster. Furthermore, I learned how to remove paint by sanding the piece. I would never have learned these if I had succeeded the first time.