For this ENGI 210 project, I made an aluminum diamond on the water jet cutter with a silhouette of a dinosaur. The first step was to design the diamond and dinosaur on illustrator and save that as an svg. Then I used the water jet cutter to cut out the diamond and dinosaur.

WATER JET CUTTING

I had a little bit of trouble with the diamond moving during the cut and messing up the dinosaur. As you can see in the photo below, one trial completely failed as the piece had moved so much that the dinosaur was completely distorted. One of the two successful cuts also moved a little bit. Upon closer inspection of the piece, you can see how the edges of the dinosaur cut are a little slanted. To prevent the movement of the piece, I changed what got cut first on the water jet cutter. Instead of cutting the diamond first, I cut the dinosaur first so that if that moves after it gets cut it will not affect the diamond cut whereas if the diamond moves, it would affect the dinosaur cut. 

Figure 1: Pieces from the water jet cutter

POST PROCESSING

After using the waterjet cutter, I filed down the edges of the diamond that were a little bit rough. 

Figure 2: Filling the edges of the diamonds

Then I used sandpaper to sand and process the surface of the aluminum. I used three grains of sandpaper and worked my way up from the coarser grain to the finer grain. The sandpaper grains I used were 120, 180, and 400. Below you can also see an image of before and after the sanding process.

Figure 3: Before and after sanding the pieces

FINISHING

After sanding, I used the vinyl cutter to cut stickers that I could use as a negative for the “RAWR”. I designed the RAWR on illustrator and then saved it as a pdf to use on the vinyl cutter. Then I used the negative as a stencil for spray painting the “RAWR” onto the dinosaur diamond. I tested the spray painting on the piece that messed up from the water color to make sure the stencil worked well and test what color I wanted to use for the final pieces. 

Figure 4: Testing the spray paint process and colors

Below you can see the finished pieces. Although they are slightly different, I am really happy with how they turned out.

Figure 5: The final pieces

COST BREAKDOWN

The chart below breaks down the cost of making these aluminum pieces.