And Once More… a Beginner’s Begrimed 

During this past two weeks, I’ve been working in the OEDK Machine Shop creating a machined & fabricated butterfly. Because I chose the beginner’s difficulty, this project included an already mapped out road plan for the drafting and designing of the project. However, creative liberty was still taken within the design of the butterfly and the finishing of the project. Going forth, I started the process of the fabrication…

Discerning Drafting

To start off this process, I drafted my idea for a design with the given diamond shape to cut. As it had strong ties to a game I enjoyed (Life is Strange), I decided a Butterfly would be the best option to design and cut. After creating a mimicked butterfly to the game (Common blue butterfly with purposefully uneven wings) in Adobe Illustrator, I began the next step in the creation of the Metal Butterfly.

After loading steel into the OEDK Plasma Cutter, I loaded the .ai butterfuly file into the plasma cutter software and began calibrating the machine. I made the cut a “female” cut so as to preserve the stylized wing of the butterfly (Thus preventing slag from forming along the inside cut of the butterfly). From there, I ran a test run to ensure it would cut correctly on the steel and began the cutting process. As the Plasma Cutter is more accurate than precise, I cut multiple Metal Butterfly diamonds out of the steel to ensure two of the cuts were identical in caricature to one another. The most similar pieces that matched the initial design and to each other were these:

Following the cutting process, a number of post-processing techniques were utilized to clean up and restore the luster of the steel. To start this process, an angle grinder was used to remove the formed dross and slag on the underside of the piece. Employing circular movements, the excess formed material was removed and the surface of the piece was not damaged in the process. While not damaged, the slag did still somewhat collect visually on the surface, as shown, as it couldn’t be melted to uniformity. However, later post-processing removed this affect and the overall aesthetic was not ruined. Following this, a file was used on the inside of the butterfly to remove interior slag and any sharp protrusions.

Nearing the finish, the processing for the metal was to be stripped to shine the surface and return the metal’s luster. While normally a sand-blaster would be utilized for this step, this machine and the belt sander were broken during my creation of the piece. To counteract this, however, I utilized an orbital sander at various grits to ensure the same affect. Starting at 60 grit, I removed the large darkened surface metal layer through various motions and pressing techniques to ensure all was removed. Following this, I utilized the same grit technique from the previous wood-cutting project to shine/buff the pieces. Moving from 60 to 120 to 200 to 400 to finally 800, the metal was essentially dusted and buffed to a near-mirror finish to remove all processing, and to match the intended aesthetic for the design.

Finally, to protect the metal from future degradation and rust, a polyurethane clearcoat was applied to the piece. While the coat did remove some luster/softness to the metal, the overall protection it brang outweighed the negatives that came with it as it didn’t ruin the overall appearance of the piece. After spraying the Metal Butterfly and letting it dry, the piece was finished!

Relevant Review

Room for improvement on the next Metal-Processing Project

• Not waiting too long between cutting and finishing metal pieces
  • A non-negligible amount of time passed between my cutting and finishing allowing for several rust pockets to form/develop. Hastening this process would prevent this and any potential damage that can come from this rust
• Using more developed/specialized tools for post-processing
  • Not having a sandblaster increased the length of this project tenfold, and using one next go around will definitively help the process
• Testing different metal types & plasma cutting methods to determine the best for both methods to ensure pieces are cut to the best aesthetic and least likely to become tarnished

Despite these complications, I enjoyed the Metal-Cutting Process and look forward to working with it again during the Midterm Project!

Fungible Fees

• Materials
  • Two 2’x4′ pieces of 1’x2′ Steel (2 x $1.80): $2.60
  • Polyurethane Clearcoat (2 x $0.37): $0.74
• Time:
  • 4 hours at Texas Median Material Processor Wage ($12): $48.00
• Overhead:
  • Estimate: $10

Total Cost of Metal Cutting & Post-Processing: $61.34

Since my last project, I utilized a number of development procedures before cutting to ensure a smooth creation process. For next time, I’ll test a number of different post-processing techniques to see how these techniques affect the final aesthetic for the piece!