For this assignment, we were tasked to plasma cut the outline of the state/province we lived in and then post process the piece to create the final product. I live in Jakarta, Indonesia before coming to Houston so I used its outline for this assignment.

First, I had to prep the illustrator file and then choose the material I wanted to use for this assignment. During our post processing and plasma cutting training in class, I preferred working with aluminum instead of steel so I decided to go with aluminum for this assignment. I then opened my illustrator file on the Torchmate program and used the plasma cutter to cut out my piece.  I was amazed to see how quickly and effortlessly the plasma cutter cut through the aluminum sheet. After cutting out two “Jakarta”s, it was time to post process the pieces!

My post processing goal for this assignment is to process both pieces in such a way that both will end up having smooth edges and a consistent texture throughout its exterior. Here’s a “before” picture of one of the pieces I cut out:

As you can see, there is some dross on its edges so I first tried using a dremel tool to remove the dross. Although I had good control of the dremel tool, my attempt to remove the dross was unsuccessful so I decided to use a file instead. It turns out that using the file was the best decision I made during this assignment. It worked much faster and I removed the dross in no time. Here’s a picture of the same piece with its dross removed:

Next, I wanted to file down the ridges on the sides of my piece to give it smooth, curved edges. On my first attempt, I didn’t pay attention to the number of filing strokes I used to curve each portion of its edge so the curvature of the edges varied from one point to another and was quite uneven. On my second attempt (on my second piece), I paid closer attention when filing the edges of my piece so I got a much more even curvature throughout the edges of my piece. Finally, I used sandpaper to smooth out any small ridges left on my piece. Before and after pictures:

Now onto my favorite part of this assignment: sandblasting! To really give my pieces an even texture throughout its exterior, I sandblasted both pieces using the sandblaster in the wood shop. It took me a couple of attempts to sandblast the entire piece evenly but nonetheless, it came out really nicely.

I really liked the color of my pieces after it was sandblasted but its shade of grey was not very even throughout the piece (you can see darker spots throughout the pieces in the picture above). I wasn’t really satisfied with it so I decided to spray paint it to even out the color of the pieces. I went with fluorescent green to represent the vast area of rainforest in Indonesia.

And here’s the final product!

I have to say that this is the assignment that I enjoyed the most so far. I had a lot of fun post processing my piece and I’m very pleased with the final result!