I knew I wanted to make a character for my plasma cut piece, so I began by thinking about what characters were vaguely diamond-shaped. Eventually I thought of Totoro, and I manipulated my diamond so that the tip of the diamond would represent the ears, and the remainder of the diamond would represent the body.

Though I got the assurance that the inside details would show up alright in the plasma cut, my first cut was far from perfect. There was an incredible amount of dross, and the shape didn’t cut completely through (I had to bend the ears back and forth to pull it out). Initially, I thought that it was because the details were too small and impossible to cut, so I revised my drawing to only be the outline for my second cut. Though I liked the absence of details on the second cut, the edges were still weirdly dross-heavy. Talking with Dr. Wettergreen, Adulfo, Fernando, and Joe, they were able to diagnose that the plasma cutter nozzle was clogged and worn out.

Once the nozzle was replaced, I used stainless steel to make my third cut, and this produced an outline of Totoro with very little dross that I easily filed off.

I wanted a shiny, mirror finish for the final piece, so I Googled how to polish metal. All of the articles I read told me to put on a podcast or video and have a seat, as I would be sanding for a while – which was true. I started by rubbing the pieces with a 3M scuffing pad, and then went from low to high grit: 220, 300, and 1000. It took roughly 45 minutes for each piece to get to a point where I couldn’t improve it anymore, so I had to stop and wait for the machine shop the next day to use the polishing wheel.

The polishing wheel was honestly a terrifying machine to use – Joe using it made it look deceptively easy. It took him about 2 minutes to polish one of the Totoro’s to a reflective finish, and it took me about 10 minutes to get the second piece to the same state. The piece got extremely hot, and I had to be careful about the angle I was polishing at in order to prevent the piece from getting caught and flying out of my hands. However, I got the reflective finish I wished for from the beginning!

I wanted to etch on Totoro’s detailing using the laser cutter, but decided to spray paint the details instead to save some time. I made outlines of its features on Illustrator and cut out “stencils” using painter’s tape on a scrap piece of plywood (8 speed, 100 power, 10 frequency as I only needed to cut through the tape and not the wood).

I masked the metal pieces with the stencils and went to town with black spray paint followed by two coats of glossy clear coat.

I was so excited about being done that I didn’t take a clearer completed picture, but I definitely should have been more patient with the final spray painting step. The Totoro on the left turned out okay, but the Totoro on the right was not as dry as the left one when I coated with clear coat, affecting the edges of the paint job.

Cost analysis:

• Laser cutter usage (1.5 minutes) – $12.73/hour = $0.32 (FabShop Magazine Direct)
• Plasma cutter usage (6 minutes) – $100.00/machine time = $10.00 (PlasmaSpider)
• Aluminum sheet, 6″x18″ -$4.02 (Home Depot)
• Stainless steel sheet, 6″x12″ – $10.43 (MSC Industrial Supply)
• File – $10.30 (Grainger)
• Sandpaper (variety pack) – $4.99 (Amazon)
• 2-sided buffing wheel – $282.74 (MSC Industrial Supply)
• Spray paint (1 color, 1 clear coat) – $3.98/can = $7.96
• Labor (5 hours, assuming Texas minimum wage) = $7.25/hour = $36.25
• Total = $403.26