In this week’s lab, we learned about using plasma cutter to cut metal into specific shape and also post processing to make it aesthetic pleasing.

I first set the rate as 140 which lies in the middle area of the steel reference card. and it turned to be over burnt on the margins and leave a lot of burnt signs on the back. Then I dropped the rate to 130, which still didn’t make any difference. Thus, I set it to the lowest rate I had on that card, which is 80. It turned out to be less burnt, but still not very aesthetic pleasing. So it required to be post-processed in order to achieve the goal.

Since the plasma cutter created lots of rough surfaces, I decided to use the file first to make it flat. After filed down those extra metal, I used the sand buster to sand paint the surface. It is really hard to sand paint on the surface of steel, which I needed to hold the gun to a spot for a while to make it work. These caused the surface become uneven that some spots are lighter and some are darker. However, the sand buster did a great job on cleaning those over burnt signs of the margins. It can sand down all those black marks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After that, I found some foam stickers which composed of ‘TEXAS’ and I stick them on the front of surface. Then used the metallic spray paint to paint it to gold, while leaved the ‘TEXAS’ letters unpainted. However, when I finished spray paint the second one, the foam sticker of ‘T’ was too sticky to peal off and leaved some remaining glue, which I couldn’t get rid off. So I decided to cover all other places except the letter ‘T’ and sand buster it again. But since the paper I used to cover was so weak that it was damaged while I sand painted it, which sanded down some other spots. Therefore, I had to spray painted it again. Because of the second painting layer, the color became too thick and made the surface look unflat and not so aesthetic pleasing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the first Texas that I made, which is not destroyed by second layer of spray paint.