My first step was finding a design that I wanted to cut onto the diamond shape. I went online to find a design that I brought into Adobe illustrator. I chose an image of a wolf howling at the moon that I brought into Adobe Illustrator. I had to do some small edits to ensure that the Laser cutter would cut out the right shape and leave the moon as negative space. After finishing my image on illustrator I brought it to the plasma cutter.

After cutting out 4 iterations of my design I started angle grinding my diamonds. I had quite a bit of slag on my cuts especially on the inside of my design. It took me a while to do cut off all the slag and make it a flat smooth surface on both sides. During this process I accidentally heavily grinded down one edge of my diamond heavily.

After using the angle grinder to cut off all the slag I used the orbital sander starting with grit of 60 to sand my piece. After using a grit of 60 I went up to 120 and so on until I reached an 800 grit sand on my pieces.

The next step for my was to apply a clear coat to my pieces. This was the most challenging step for me. I set my pieces out and applied my clear coat, however when I came back to check on them they had stuck to the cardboard resulting in small blemishes on the non sprayed side. I tried to fix this by sanding and starting again and I received the same result. I ended up trying to prop one side up while I spray in hoped that that would reduce the blemishes.

Cost Estimate:

Material: ~$6

Labor: 6hrs ~$45 ($7.5/hr)

Operation Costs: ~$30 (Plasma Cutter and orbital Sander)

Total Costs: $81

Reflection:

One this I would’ve changed about my diamond is the clear coat. If I were to do this project again I would apply less of a clear coat and maybe have my piece dangling or standing up strait so that my piece wouldn’t stick to the cardboard that it was on.