For this project, we were charged with creating a plasma cut shape out of a diamond. After our tutorial, I felt ready to start on my design. I cut my piece during class time around the same time as many of my classmates, so it was pretty easy to get it cut as everything was already set up. We used stainless steel, and I used the design I had created earlier on adobe illustrator, which was a cutout of the shape of Jamaica. I also angle grinded it with the help of some of my classmates:

There was still a bit of dross leftover, so I took a file to some of the edges. It was at this point that I noticed there was a plastic coating on the steel, which can be seen on the upper diamond:

After peeling off the plastic and filing the shapes, they looked much better finished. I used a metal dremel bit on the edges, which helped with a few of the remaining bits of dross. My next move was to sandblast them, which I did with the help of a lab tech:

At this point I felt ready to paint them but there was a critical issue. The OEDK had no yellow or green spray paint, which I felt were critical to my Jamaica themed plasma cut. I asked Dr. Wettergreen to order me these paints, but in the meantime I spray painted the pieces white so that I would have no problems with the light colors when they came:

After a few days when the spray paint had been delivered to the OEDK, I taped the cuts and used yellow, green, and black spray paint to create the Jamaican flag:

At this point I was very happy with my plasma cut pieces and ready to turn them in and create a budget breakdown:

Steel sheet: 30$ (amazon)

Spray paint: 4×4$ = 16$ (amazon)

Tools and shop: 50$ (txrx makerspace lab in houston)

My time: 20$ (~2 hours at 10$/hour)

Total: $116