Our task now was to fabricate and post-process on a piece of steel.

I choose to cut out the silhouette of my home state of Tennessee. This proved to be a challenging design to cut as the first 2-3 attempts to generate a file to cut on the plasma cutter failed either due to the complexity of the shape or secret additional vector lines in the SVG file I downloaded.

Once formatted appropriately, cutting was relatively straight forward.

After cutting, I used an angle grinder to remove the dross and polish the steel.

Next, I went to the wet lab to use the sandblaster to remove any small imperfections and to create a uniform, matte surface to paint over.

Finally, I applied two coats of matte red spray paint, matching the state flag’s color. What had been a relatively straight-forward process up until this point suddenly became troublesome. The spray paint layers were unevenly applied, and I did not come up with an effective methodology to dry one side without messing up the other. In hindsight, I should have suspended the pieces in the air while applying the paint and drying.

I still had fun with this project, though. I enjoyed using the angle grinder, which had previously been somewhat daunting to wield. I now view it as an orbital sander that throws sparks.

I used a small, disposable piece of cardboard to dry the diamonds on and made sure to discard of them appropriately in the trash.

COST:

1’x1′ square sheet of steel: $8

Tool rental | 3 hours: $90

Can of spray paint: $6

Labor Time | 4 hours: $120

TOTAL: $214