Like a Diamond In the Sky | ENGI 210: Prototyping and Fabrication

Plasma cutting is a lot scarier when you are doing it alone compared to watching with a group of people. The sound it makes is like an amalgamation of a hurricane, thunderstorm, and blizzard. It did not help that I had to go through several iterations of designs before finally making one that would plasma cut the way I intended. Since I had not accounted for the kerf of the plasma, my design, a star within a diamond, separated into two pieces on my first attempt.

After plasma cutting, I used an angle grinder to get rid of the slag. However, while it could take away the excess metallic residue, the indents in the steel remained. Thus, I decided to use a file to further chip away at the imperfections. I wanted to use the sandblaster to prepare the piece before painting, but as it was broken when I was doing the assignment, I opted for sanding it with low grit instead. I roughened the surface a little, if only visually.

As I mentioned earlier, I designed my metal piece to look like a star within a diamond. The shape was part of the imagery, but I realized that the piece needed to be carefully colored to get the idea across. I covered the star portion of the piece with painter’s tape and spray-painted the edges black to represent the night sky. Unfortunately, I could not find any yellow spray paint, so I used acrylic paint instead. I could not fully get rid of the brush stroke pattern on the paint, but I assumed after sanding, it would become a lot less noticeable.