For our plasma cutting assignment we were asked to plasma cut the first state in America we lived in, and since the California file had some troubles, I cut out Texas.

When we first came in we learned how to use all the software and stuff and started cutting with steel. Roy printed out a nice clean version of Kentucky, and then I went to print out Texas, and we had some troubles. Basically since the Texas I was trying to cut was too small, the arc-in to make the cut kept over shooting and cutting a huge notch into the corner of Texas. We tried lengthening the arc in but it still didn’t work, so we called it a day and I came in later.

The notched Texases:

(You can especially see the notch on the top one, which is the one we tried a longer arc in on, I still don’t quite understand why that made the notch so much deeper but it really did)

The next time I came in I talked to Dr. Wettergreen about how I could fix the settings so it wouldn’t cut in, and he suggested making it slightly bigger, and cutting it out of aluminum, both of which I did and I got a nice pretty Texas which I sandblasted and angle ground to make it soft and free of sharp edges/slag.

At this point I decided to paint and put a gloss finish on my Texas because I really liked the way the samples with the clear coat looked. I started spray painting my Texas, and I decided on bright green (mainly because that bottle felt the most full and I didn’t want to run out.) And to sum up the process: Painting the Texas was really frustrating and took sooooo long!! I followed the basic plan of: Do a light coat, let it dry, sand, then repeat:

 After a Coat:

(In this one you can see the discoloration on the bottom point that would not go away! It basically looked all splotchy.)

Post Sanding:

But as you can see from the pictures, the paint was just not giving me a good coat! So I kept doing it, in the hope that eventually it would get better. And after 10 coats, it finally started looking even and the discoloration finally disappeared:

I gave the front side a light sanding with VERY fine grain sandpaper (as to not ruin my 10+ coats over 3 days) and I chose a clear coat. There were a bunch of options (that all seemed to be kind of the same), so I pretty much went off the same criteria: whichever is fullest

Then I sprayed on my first coat, and almost had a heart attack because it came out as a white layer on top of my green:

(These pictures don’t do it justice. It was like a slightly transparent, bright white coat)

I then proceeded to triple check that the bottle did indeed say clear and read the entire thing to see if it said anything about spraying on white and drying clear (it didn’t and they should add it!). So at this point I was real worried, but I decided all I could do is just wait and see if its clear in an hour, so I left it and came back and it was clear and glossy!!

I quickly threw on another coat and let it dry and then came back again and sprayed the back side with 2 coats, an hour apart and I finally got my final Texas with gloss on both sides!

All in all, I would say this project taught me a lot about patience for painting (because if you try to rush, everything goes really bad) and a lot about post processing. I got to use the sand blaster which is incredibly fun, and I really like my final gloss finish, so I’m pretty happy.