For my plasma cutter turned water jet diamond, I went with a very simple owl cut out inside of the traditional diamond painted black.
I began the assignment by creating my adobe illustrator file as seen here with the owl icon from the noun project. Creating the initial file took about 10 minutes.
After I created the file, I exported it to the Water Jet’s computer. This whole process took 30+ minutes of exporting and re-exporting the file in the correct format and debugging the water jet computer software. It took multiple attempts to give the water jet cutter the correct file type and to ensure the water jet layout software scaled my pieces correctly.
After debugging the software and the machine, I was able to cut my two diamonds on the water jet! From time spent setting up the machine and creating the paths on the computer to the actually machine time, this took be about 1 hour. Here are the parts immediately after they came out of the water jet!
After I took them out of the water jet, I began to post process them. All in all, the post processing took me about 2 hours of work. First, I used a file to get rid of the sharp edges on the bottom and sides of the pieces that were caused by the water jet cutter. If you look closely at the picture below, you can see the scratch marks from the filing.
To remove these scratch marks, I sanded the back of the diamonds with 80, 400, and 1000 grit sand papers. After sanding, I used a wire brush on both the top and the bottom of the diamonds to clean them up. The results of the wire brushing is in the picture below. 
After wire brushing, I sand blasted both of the diamonds. Initially, I put a clear coat on the diamonds to keep the authentic metal look of the diamonds. However, the initial clear coat did not turn out particularly well. It was uneven and dirty so I decided I would re-do the finishing of the pieces.
After the clear coat dried, I sanded the majority of it off with 400 grit sand paper to smooth out the surface of the diamonds again. After smoothing it out, I then applied a coat of black spray paint to finish the owl diamonds. Here is the diamonds immediately after applying the spray paint.
After it dried, I applied a light second layer of spray paint to finish up the black diamonds. Here is the finished product after the spray paint dried!
Though they are very simple, I love how my owl diamonds turned out! The total cost of this project is calculated below:
- Adobe Illustrator usage: $21 (one month of Adobe Illustrator)
- Steel sheet metal: $12.50 (1′ by 2′ 0.060″ steel sheet metal from Metals Depot)
- Water jet cutter time: 1.5hr x $20/hr (from WardJet estimated cost) = $30
- Metal file: $8 (from Home Depot)
- Sand paper: $6 (variety pack of sand paper from amazon)
- Wire brush: $2 (from Home Depot)
- Sand blaster time: $40/hr (from the Cost Owl)
- Clear spray paint: $5 (from Lowes)
- Black spray paint: $4 (from Lowes)
- Labor: 4hr x $15/hr (what I was paid this past summer) = $60
Total: ~$190
Just consumed material & labor costs (not equipment): ~$88
