introduction

For this assignment, we were tasked with waterjet cutting a diamond and whatever shape of our choice inside. Setting up the file was rather simple, all I had to do was find a shape on the noun project and paste it into the given diamond in Adobe Illustrator. The shape I chose was the Singaporean flag, which consists of a crescent moon and five stars as shown below.

setup

After preparing the .ai file for the cut, I followed the manual in the wet lab to operate the waterjet cutter. Preparing the file for cutting was quite straightforward. I did encounter when I clicked “post to print” an error because the default offset value was larger than the shape of the small stars. This would’ve caused the waterjet to cut into remaining material that shouldn’t be cut. I got around this quite easily by manually decreasing the offset value.

I was able to set up the waterjet cutter correctly with Kasia’s help, and obtained two cuts shown in the picture below!

post-processing

The raw cuts I obtained from the waterjet cutter were rather coarse. In particular, the corners were very sharp and the edges were all rough to touch. Therefore, I used sandpaper to smoothen all surfaces and edges and also round the corners a little bit so that I can grab them comfortably.

My initial plan was to use spray paint to color the piece half red and half white (the color of the Singaporean flag), but I noticed that the OEDK didn’t have spray paint of either color. Instead, I chose to apply red acrylic paint to the pieces using a paintbrush.

Given the time it took for acrylic paint to dry (~2 hours), I was only able to apply 2 coats to the front and 1 coat to the back. Because I used a paintbrush, I was able to see the brush pattern on the surfaces after the paint dried up, which I actually liked a lot after all. There were some struggles too, however. Firstly, it is difficult to apply the paint evenly to a surface with a paintbrush if I am only applying 1~2 coats. In addition, I noticed that the paint went through the holes/edges and got on the backside a little bit, which messed up the paint job on the other side a little bit, unfortunately.

I stopped at this stage for submission, but I am hoping to apply a couple more coats of paint later and possibly a layer of clear coat as well!

cost analysis

Honestly, this assignment really did not require a lot of material.

• Sheet of metal: ~$2
• Sandpaper: ~$1
• Acrylic paint: ~$0.50
• Labor (2.5 hrs): $37.5

The cost of metal and paint I used for this assignment were trivial compared to the time spent on setup and post-processing. In total, it cost approximately $40 in material and labor to create two identical diamonds with a Singaporean flag in them!