Sandblasted Texas

Creating the Texas state was an interesting experience. In comparison to the laser cutter, this process was much faster, albeit post-processing is needed. After selecting carbon steel, I imported the image file onto the plasma cutting computer where a tool path of where the cutter goes will need to be generated. One interesting challenge we faced was not seeing the tool path because we did not have the correct view settings. After cutting the part, I removed the slag with a metal, coarse file and a Dremel. These tools suited my needs of removing a large amount of material. After this, I sandblasted the piece. In order to uniformly perform this, I maintained a distance of 1 inch between the air gun and the piece. Another interesting observation was that results were better after blasting the sand to create a miniature storm. The end result of this was a brushed, matte finish that I really liked and wanted to highlight. This was the reason I chose not to spray paint. I believed the sandblasted texture was unique and symbolic of the robustness commonly attributed to Texas.

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