design
I wanted this piece to be functional, so I decided to make it a bottle opener. I found a free svg online, imported it into illustrator, and put it inside the provided diamond shape. Then, I added some eyes so that I didn’t seem like an alcoholic.
cutting
The water jet was not doing too great when I first entered the wet lab. First, I had to wait for the lab assistant to finish replacing all of the water in it. Then, after spending an hour or so preparing my metal and my file, I ran the cut. Immediately, sand and water started spraying out of the machine. I got a lab assistance to help clear the water out of the sand nozzle, but then it happened again. Then they cleared the nozzle completely, and it worked more or less. There was a small amount of water that got into the air tube. Then, they adjusted the tube a bit and the final cut worked with minimal flaws. Unfortunately, one of my cuts didn’t finish completely due to an error in my file, so I had to remove that during post processing.
post processing
First, I had to get rid of the material in the large cut. I took the piece to the drill press and made a hole near the gap in the cut. Then I used a hammer and some pliers to fold the metal piece until I could tear it off. I used a file to even out the edges, then sanded up to 1000 grit to get a nice surface. Ideally, the OEDK would have had polish available, but I was unable to find any. I ended up putting a layer of enamel on and calling it a day.
cost analysis
Machine: A waterjet costs about $30 an hour to maintain. Since I spent an hour and a half at the machine (a lot of which was watching it get fixed), that’s $45 of machine upkeep.
Metal: A 9 1/3 square ft sheet of eighth inch aluminum costs 60 dollars. Each diamond was 2 x 5 in, so that’s a total of 20 square in, or .14 square ft. This means I used $0.89 of aluminum.
Enamel: I used a negligible amount of enamel. But so does everyone else, and someone has to pay for it. I’ll say $0.05.
Labor: I spent 3 hours on this piece, and for $21 an hour, that makes $63. In addition, I had to ask one of the design technicians to help fix the machine. Even though I’m pretty sure the damage occurred during the previous print (a 200 team that had done a massive cut), I’ll include the cost here. He worked for about 45 minutes, and I’ll guess that he gets paid $30 an hour, so that’s $22.50. That means that this assignment cost $85.50 in labor.
Total: $45.94 before labor, $131.44 after labor. I don’t think that anyone would buy two bottle openers for that much, even not including labor costs. I’m surprised that the machine upkeep is that much, and if the machine breaks itself frequently, does not seem to be a cost efficient piece of equipment.
