Hello, and welcome to Chaüs, one of Houston’s most lively and creative cafes, the best student run business at Rice, and Doris’s second home.
Originally, I was going to utilize the geometry of the diamond shape and make it the head of the New England Patriots for this assignment. However, to our disappointment, the Pats did not make it to the Super Bowl this year…Call me a fake fan if you want, but I was unsatisfied with their performance this season and decided not to dedicate my project to them.
My inspiration for the new design came to me while I was sipping a hot Nutty Bee at the Rice Coffeehouse on a cold rainy day.
Bean Juice, Brain Juice
To fit the theme of the Nutty Bee, I decided to cut the corners of my diamond off and make it a hexagon, like a honeycomb!
I chose to use the quarter-inch aluminum because aluminum is a softer material compared with stainless steel. After running a dry cut to make sure the hexagon would fit on the metal, I did a test cut at the feedrate 20. Under the suggestion of Will, another lab tech who is more experienced with the plasma cutter, I adjusted the feedrate to 15. I angle grinded the hexagons to get rid of the dross.
Afterwards, I sand blasted the surfaces and spray painted them yellow.
For the bee and the hazelnut, I decided to use the Fiber laser cutter to etch off the paint for a larger color contrast. One lesson I’ve already learned from this class (and freshman engineering design) is that: think twice, cut once, and always do a test run if possible. So I took the piece of scrap metal I cut my hexagons out of, treated the surface following the same steps mentioned above, and tried etching both symbols and words. It took a couple tries to get the settings right, but I eventually went with 5 speed, 100 power and 1 frequency. Here is a look of some test cuts I did (and if you look closely enough, you may catch a typo I made at first: yes, I indeed “spray pained” my metal lol)
After making sure the laser cuter will indeed etch away the paint, now here comes the second problem: alignment. And this is how I went about it:
(1)I put my bee and hazelnut in my hexagon shape and grouped them together.
(2)I located the hexagon with the right side at x = 0 and the top point of the hexagon at y = 0
(3)I put the metal at the upper left corner of the bed, and zeroed the laser at the very corner of the bed.
AND IT WORKED
I repeated the above method of alignment and etched my steps of completing this project on the back of the hexagon.
In the end, I applied a layer
of clear coat to finish it up
Here is a look of the final product, a nerdy beed sitting next to a nutty bee (in the steel can) and the Coffeehouse Squirrel
Cost Estimate: $138.92
Cost breakdown:
Labor: 7h * $9 = $63
Spray paint: $2.94
1 day rental of plasma cutter: $55
Aluminum: a 12″ * 12″ sheet is $30.78, so for my project: the aluminum would cost about $15
Clear Coating: $2.99
One last note: one thing I really enjoyed during this assignment, is that I got to help out my peers with the plasma cutter, watching them cut their metal and hearing about their ideas while I was on shift.
