Based on the diamond shape, I decided to make an ice cream for this assignment. I made two versions in total and it turned out that my second try was more successful.

In my first try, I cut the ice cream shape ( shown in the following drawing) with a thin sheet of aluminum. No matter how I changed the feed rate, the shape was always a bit off and the slag was hard to remove. I took the 180 feed rate products, filed down the slag as much as I could, and then sandblasted two pieces.

After that, I spraypainted the pieces in white, and then used the vinyl cutter to cut out the cone and beans (shown in the following drawing). When the white paint dried, I sticked the stickers to the metal pieces, painted the beans in blue and the cone in yellow.

Because the weather outside was cold, the aluminum pieces weren’t dried properly after I removed the stickers and clear coat them. Unfortunately, someone painted my pieces in black when they were outside and made me have to redo the pieces. However, in the redo process, I learnt more and improved my final products.

First, I chose stainless steel instead of aluminum in the beginning. I asked Teddy about the setting and material he used (because his pieces looked really cool and clean!)  It turned out that steel didn’t melt as violently as aluminum did, and my ice cream shape came out nicely!

Second, I was actually not satisfied with the color combination in my first try, as there was too much white and I wanted to add more colors to my design. Therefore, I kept the white and yellow combination for the cone (which was still achieved by using vinyl cut stickers) but changed the design of the upper ice cream part. This time, after the cone part dried, I covered it and painted the upper part with a combination of blue and purple.

Moreover, instead of spray painting the beans, I laser etched the beans this time to avoid accumulating to much paint. I speeded up the cut a bit to just make the beans part had a lighter color ( I didn’t want it to etch all the way to the metal surface). Although the beans didn’t turn out exactly as I expected, (they looked fine on one piece but showed the metal color on another piece), I would say the second try’s products still look better than the first try ones.

For the last step, I laser etched the steps of making these ice cream pieces on the back. I used the fiber setting in a slower speed instead of the CO2 setting as I wanted to etch through the white paint and show a color contrast.

Overall, I am happy with the fact that I tried a different approach and got a better outcome. In my first try, although I paid much effort to it, the paint accumulated too much and the thin aluminum piece couldn’t hold that much. After removing the stickers, the painted surface was clearly uneven. In my second try, I took Jessica’s advice and moved the pieces inside the OEDK after it dried a bit. Within a warmer environment, the paint dried in a cleaner way and the steel surface looked even.

Cost estimation (if only consider the last try):

labor cost: 8 hours ~$80 assuming $10 per hour

steel:  6″ x 12″,0.018 inch thick ~ $10 (from Home Depot).

file: 3 files in one set for $7.97 (from Home Depot).

spray paints: 4 cans, (white, yellow, blue, purple), $3.98 per can on Home Depot, $15.92 in total.

vinyl cutter: 34inches VEROR cutter $303.99 (I didn’t find any avalible rental vinyl cutter online, so I searched it on amazon)

plasma cutter: $92 per day (united rentals)

In total, this project cost $509.7.