My next project for this class was to make an engraved diamond out of metal. The initial hope was to use the plasma cutter, but since it was down, I had to use the water jet cutter instead. To show that we could achieve consistent success, we were to make two identical diamonds.

 

The first step in this process involved designing the shape to be cut. The diamond outline was provided, and it was my job to customize it. After browsing vector art for a while, I couldn’t quite find something as interesting as I would have liked, so I created my own design in Adobe Illustrator. I made a baseball diamond where the inner grass and the bases would be cut out while the basepaths remained as solid material.

 

I then uploaded this design to the water jet cutter to begin cutting. I used steel, so I set the water jet settings accordingly. I also made sure that it was set to cut along the inside first so that the piece wasn’t loose while the machine was still cutting the small details.

 

I ran the machine, and everything was working well. Then, inexplicably, it stopped about 90% of the way through the second diamond. The computer threw an error and the program was essentially frozen. Even after consulting the OEDK staff, I could not get the cut to continue. The eventual solution was just turning the computer completely off and back on. At this point, I was not confident in my ability to perfectly line up the machine to finish the preexisting cut, so I had to cut a new second diamond.

 

Following the cut, my shapes looked nice and relatively clean.

 

It doesn’t entirely show in the previous picture, but the edges of my piece were very sharp and rough. To clean them up, I used a file. I filed along all of the edges, both inside and outside the shape.

 

After this, I wanted to clean up the rusty spots that were present across my shape. I employed the sandblaster as my second post-processing method. The result was a clean, spotless raw metal look as seen below.

 

For my final post-processing method, I wanted to protect the steel from oxidation and add color it appropriately, so I used brown spray paint. I covered the lower side with tape before painting to ensure that it didn’t touch any other wet paint sprayed by others and that it didn’t accumulate any sort of spots from sitting in excess brown paint.

 

After this side had dried, I came back, removed the tape, and painted the other side. I was very happy with my final product, with one small caveat…

 

Unfortunately, during the time I had left my parts to dry, one of more classmates carelessly painted over it. I unfortunately did not leave myself enough time to sand the paint layer off and re-paint it before the due date, so this is the piece I will have to turn in. As much as I would like to pretend the blue and white splatters add a touch of artistic flavor, I can’t quite say I’m happy with it.

 

The final cost I calculated for my part was $136.03. This included the cost of materials, machine time, and hourly wages for the various roles I filled throughout the design and fabrication process.