What kind of bird doesn’t need a comb?
A bald eagle!
Anyways, this week, I made a plasma cut diamond design of an eagle (Figure 1).
Figure 1: My plasma cut piece
PROCESS
1. 2D DRAWINGS (1 hr.)
First, I downloaded the diamond shape from canvas as the outline for the diamond shape and imported it to adobe illustrator. Then, I found a picture of an eagle that I liked online and traced the image in AI. Finally, I added the block letters C and B to the top of the diamond and connected everything to make my design.
2. PLASMA CUT (1 hr)
In this step, I used the plasma cutter to cut the design into 1/16 steel (Figure 2). Once we got the correct settings, the actual plasma cutting was very quick; however, it took several trials to find the correct settings (with the help of Joe). I used 30 amps and 116 volts to make the cut. The original settings were 45 amps and 121 volts; this cut too much and the plasma cutter would shut off.
Figure 2: Plasma Cutter
3. POST PROCESSING (45 min)
After using the plasma cutter, the metal was quite rough in edges and slag built up in areas around the cut. Using the angle grinder, I smoothed the edges and flattened the slag to produce a smoother piece of metal (Figure 3). This was good for large scale abnormalities. Next, I used the sand blaster (Figure 4) to remove the minor imperfections to produce a smoother, uniformly colored piece of metal (Figure 5). There is a clear aesthetic difference between the sand blasted and the non-sand blasted piece.
Figure 3: Angle grinding
Figure 4: Sand blasting the design
Figure 5: Post processed piece
4. SPRAY PAINT (15 min)
Finally, I spray painted the front red and the back black.
COST
1. LABOR
The total labor time was three hours. I mentioned before that my time is worth $12/hour; however, I recently got a raise to $15 because I was promoted. Therefore, total labor was $45.
2. MATERIALS
Spray paint is very cheap ($10) and sheet metal is also pretty cheap ($10). Therefore, total cost of materials was $20.
3. MACHINERY
The machinery used was the plasma cutter, the angle grinder, and the sand blaster. These are quite expensive pieces of machinery, so we can say that we used these for $50.
TOTAL COST: $115
