I drew inspiration from Rice University’s mascot and decided to have an owl cut out in the middle of my diamond. I thought this would make a cute and fun memento of my time in this class and at Rice. Once I had found an owl outline, I liked, I went to illustrator and created the file for plasma cutting. I had some issues importing my file to the plasma cutting software, but after using the tried and true method turning off and on of the computer the program had no further issues, and the file imported perfectly.

 

After plasma cutting my two pieces, I proceeded to angle grinding I sand blasted them. The sand blasting revealed some parts I had failed to properly angle grind, so I took them outside and used the angle grinder to remove the defects. I then sand blasted for a second time and I carefully checked the piece for any other defects.

To keep the Rice University theme going I decided to painting the diamond dark blue, and to have a white design saying Rice along with the state of Texas on one of the edges.I started off by painting a white base, and while that dried I worked on creating the stickers.

However, I quickly ran into the issue that the lettering was too small, and would not properly adhere to the contact paper. I tried making the lettering larger various times but it proved futile, so I settled on only having the state of Texas on the bottom right edge. I painted one side blue and decided to let it dry and paint the other side the next day. When I came back dust and spray paint from other people’s project had fallen on the pieces. I tried painting them, but the particle matter still showed through giving the surface a textured unfinished effect, so I decided to sand blast and powder coat them. However, the oven broke, so I had to pivot again and decided to give spray painting a second try. I sprayed the first side dark blue and waited an hour for it to dry. Once dried I flipped it over and spray painted the other side. After a bit of time, I came to check on the pieces and noticed that the paper towel they were resting on had left indentations on one side. Despite allowing it to dry for the same amount of time as the first time, due to the temperature dropping the paint had not properly dried and had caused the underside to slightly take on the texture of the paper towel.

Based on this and the advice of some classmates I brought the piece inside to dry, this also helped to avoid particulate matter falling on the piece while it dried. I then let the piece dry for the full hour before applying a topcoat to the freshly dried side. I then allowed the piece the dry overnight.  The next day sanded some of the defects on the damaged sides, before I applied another coat of blue paint. I allowed the pieces to dry inside for an hour before I applied a topcoat to finish them off.

I really like how the pieces turned out. My main takeaway from this experience was to be more strategic when painting. It is important to take into account the weather and what is happening in the area you have left your pieces to dry as these factors can have a negative effect on your pieces.

Cost Type	Cost	Price	Source	Quantity	Total
Materials	Steel Sheet (8”x10”)	$15/sheet	Amazon	15.5 in2	$2.81
	Blue Spray Paint	$5.98	Home Depot	1/50	$0.12
	Topcoat	$6.98	Home Depot	1/50	$0.14
Labor	Metal Working	$21/hr	Ziprecruiter	0.33 hr	$3.4
	Painter	$20/hr	Ziprecruiter	1.5hr	$30
	Prototyping Engineer (You!)	$36/hr	Ziprecruiter	6.83 hrs	$245
Overhead	Facility Cost (Machine Time)	$65/month	FUSE Makerspace	0.33 hrs	$0.13
Design	Engineering and Development	$44/hr	Ziprecruiter	0.5 hrs	$22
Total for a Prototyped Piece	$273.6
Total for a Piece	$58.6

The main cost of the prototyping was the labor cost associated with painting and correcting the issues that arose during this process. This cost could have been minimized by using a faster method such as powder coating which would have taken at most 1 hour including: set-up, curing time, and cleanup. There are also industrial painting machines, such as the SPM1300E by GODN, that could minimize the amount of labor associated with the process by automating the process and allowing for swift painting of multiple pieces at a time.