Upon discovering that snowflakes transfer particularly badly as outline only, I decided that for this project I would attempt to create the maximum amount of parallelograms in a single project. See how many you can find using all the sides! (Frankly I declared it a success after a confirmed ten.)Beginning our diamond(s?) was a simple matter of modeling/ drawing as an illustrator file, then converting over through two programs to a path file acceptable to our water cutting machine. A few minutes of trying to find said drawing, which had been lost on the laptop, and we we go.

15 minutes or so later, and two wonderful diamonds are complete. Interestingly enough, at this point it was believed the metal used was steel, later magnet inspection would reveal it to be likely aluminum. Doubtless would have saved us a few minutes of cutting time to have realized that earlier, but no skin off out teeth at this point.
Next, some basic prep work and a bit of cleaning up. After washing and drying, I decided to hand file down the outer edges before I touched anything else on this project. The waterjet cutter had, in this case, left a remarkable square edge. Even to the point of being sharp in its own right! Therefore a decent bevel was placed on that edge. The interior edge was also inspected, but it was not so sharp as to need this higher attention.

Next, a complete sandblasting of both pieces. This was a matter of some debate, as the original aluminum was at a near polish and rather appealing to keep that way. Never the less, I decided to remove a number of superficial scratches and blemishes, as well as prep the surfaces for…Spray-painting! Yes, I decided to attempt a decent pattern of overlapping diamonds/ rhombi on the piece in a nice shade of hunter green and the only decent looking black gloss I could find. This was both in my review, a solid aesthetic choice and a rather unfortunate practical one as we will go over in a moment. The black was used as a base layer, then masked with tape and resprayed green for the corners. Unfortunately, the black that I chose was certainly not the best pick. While it was marked as being both gloss and appropriate for metal, I had several issues getting a solid glossy coat on. This was contrasted with the green I used which worked very well, excepting for being too lightly sprayed on two specific areas. Overall, I believe I should have chosen a different black, given it more time to cure (To my chagrin dry enough to handle and dry enough to tape are not the same), and that the combination of these two would have resulted in a superior piece. None the less, the pieces fulfilled my goals. Spray-paint by nature is a fast and cheap option to apply a sealing paint, and while the detail can be improved, it is a solid coating. As a late stage prototype, outdoor piece, or in any place where cost is of more importance than fine detail the strategy would be useful.

Finally, discussing the cost of the work done.

In summary:

Labor – 3 hours x $10/hour = $30   Estimate based on Lab/Shop Assistants salary.

Materials – 2 cans paint x $7 = $14   Based on Krylon spray paint used at retail price.

– Aluminum 15in^2 = $1.5  Metal sheets are rarely sold at such small sizes, so an estimate will be made assuming a larger sheet could be purchased and cut to size in house (1×2 feet from metalsdepo.com). An estimate for reasonable excess/ waste could make this as much as $ 3-5 easily.

Machine time – 10 minutes waterjet cutter = Hard to get a good estimate as most commercial setups are an order of magnitude larger, but for such a setup a square foot cut can be estimated around $5-10, we are a significant scale lower, so that should cover us as a reasonable overestimate.

Total = est. $50-$60 with noticeable lower costs possible based on using cheaper labor (myself in this case) or by using supplies across multiple projects (as we do).