Having watched the entire Planet Earth II series over the weekend, I was inspired to create something aesthetically natural. Starting out with a quick sketch:

I chose simple silhouettes of hummingbirds for my subject, which I found online, and converted to paths in Adobe Illustrator. For some reason, the use of negative space in one and positive in the other diamond to bring out the subject seemed the obvious choice to me artistically. I quickly got the positioning and scaling I desired, and went to plasma cut.

During the first attempt, I selected a speed of 110 and amperage of 45 based on one of the example pieces. The nozzle on the plasma cutter was clogged slightly with molten aluminum from previous users, so after a botched first attempt, Joe and I got the nozzle cleaned up and ready to go. The second and third attempts worked well enough for me. I took the pieces to the circular sander/grinder and took off the bigger pieces of slag. Then in the basement of the OEDK, I worked with the smaller files to smooth the remaining edges and create the beak for the negative space hummingbird, which as can be seen below, was not initially completed due to the kerf of the cutter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was the most time consuming part of the project by far, taking about an hour. Afterwards, I took the pieces to the sandblaster and got the perfect natural matte finish I had envisioned:

Cost estimate:

Labor hours:

2.75 hrs * $15/hr = $41.25

Materials:

7.5 sq in * 3 * $8.64/124 sq in = $1.57

Equipment:

Plasma cutter – 30 min $70/24 hrs = $1.45

Files/sander – negligible

Total: $44.27