For this assignment, I decided to cut out a cat. First I made the file and had the cat in the middle. When I plasma cut it, I made it so the cat was a female cut and the outside was a male cut. Creating the file was relatively easy along with cutting it out. I did end up having to dig around between the slats of the plasma cutter to find my diamonds though. The water was green because the plasma cutter was getting cleaned, so my hands ended up feeling greasy and slightly moisturized after searching for all of my diamonds.  In total I made 5 diamonds. On one of the diamonds, I moved the material, so I removed the grounding cable and I tried to cut again and the plasma cutter did not move. It started but did not move in the shape of a cat. So it took me a while to figure out why, but it was because the grounding cable was not attached. So one of the cats has a little notch cut out of it because of that mistake. So I used that piece as my tester.

After I cut the pieces out, I used the angle grinder to cut off the slag on the back. I got most of the slag off, but there is one part of the cat on the back where it looks as if it has less material than the rest. I could not do much on this part, but I do know that the area is where the plasma cutter first started making the cutout of the cat. So that could be a possibility for why it looks a bit off from the rest of the cat cutout lines. But the angle grinder made the steel have a nice shiny finish and it left lines of the direction that the angle grinder was going. It was nice.

 

After I used the angle grinder, I used the sandblaster on the front and back of the cat. It was pretty easy and quick. I suggest a stool is needed because I got tired of standing on my tippy-toes trying to look in to the box though my fogged up safety glasses. After, I found that the edges still seemed a bit rough since I only sandblasted the front and the back, not the sides. So I used a piece of sandpaper and I moved the diamonds on top of the sandpaper to smooth out the edges. It was a pretty quick process and did a good job at smoothing out the edges.

 

Then comes the difficult part. The spray painting. The most fun part. Woohoo (*with enthusiasm*). I have struggled too much with this for such a simple design. First I wanted to use the glitter spray paint, but I was unable to get the paints to spray properly. So I had to decide on something else. But before I tested if the glitter paint actually worked, I used a primer coat on the tester cat. The primer was white and I found out that I had to let it dry completely before turning it over to paint the other side. If not, then the first side gets things stuck to it. Like the tarp fibers. So I primed it, and then I sprayed it with a deep turquoise that was a paint and primer in one. Then I decided that I wanted to make an X shape on the cat. So I made my first line in lime green color. Then I wanted to test out other paints as well. So I added a mirror silver like coat to it. And then it made the paint clump up a bit. It could be because the mirror coat was for glass. But I did not care much since it was my test subject. Then I sprayed it with glow in the dark paint that went on clear.

 

For my next one, I pained it for real. I did only one at first because I wanted to test the color combination. But I had a lime green background and then I made a single blue stripe. It turned out pretty good. I used Scotch tape to make the line. I only made one line, and my life would have been easier if I had only one line. But no, I wanted to have two lines… So the first one of this color scheme turned out pretty good. So I was about to make my other one, when I could not find the deep turquoise that I had used last time. I looked and searched really hard for it, but I did not find it. So I gave up and made two new ones in a different color combination.

Then I stated on my final ones. I first used an aged metal silver paint and primer as the base coat. Then I made a grey metallic coat on top of that. And then I made the blue metallic lines. The first line was easy, but it was the second line that I struggled with. The paint kept taking the lines off, so I had to redo the lines a lot. It got to the point where I was taping paper so the paint would not come off. Then the lines ended up less sharp. But over all, the line was there and it was straight. In the end, my pieces look rather similar, but not exact. It was the painting the two lines that made it difficult, and maybe not using the proper kind of tape with paint. But for one of them there is a tiny area missing some blue paint, and it has a bubble in it too. The other one is overall fine. I also sprayed a top clear glossy coat on them. So they looked decent. The painting took the longest. I say 90% of my struggle was with the paint and just waiting for it to dry. I don’t like spray paint, especially when it comes to difficult designs. I am sure there is a better way, maybe using the vinyl cutter, but I have not learned how to used it yet.

Oh, and later I found out it was the rocket team who took the blue paint I was using. It made my life sad at that point. Also we ran out of green paint, so I really could not have made a second one of my lime green single line blue cat. But it did turn out nice. Then I figured I should spray both cats at the same time, so I did that for my final two cats.