My journey of creating a diamond began in my dorm. I was watching Batman vs Superman Dawn of Justice and realized that I should probably start on my ENGI 210 project. I didn’t have any inspiration however to create my diamond. As the credits started to roll on the screen, I realized that I should do what this movie couldn’t – create a great integration of the Batman and Superman sigils. I went on Adobe Illustrator and went to work. By utilizing an SVG converter as well as the Shape Creator tool on Adobe Illustrator, I was able to create my symbol as shown below.

After getting the symbol, I was then able to go into the water jet cutter and create my symbol. I was unfamiliar with the steps of the water jet, so I followed the steps on the paper to make sure I was doing the right steps. On the first try I got my first ever piece of water cut material. I was so amped and hyped that on the second one I forgot to clamp of metal down, so the second piece didn’t come out well at all. On my third try, I was able to create a duplicate of the diamond.

After the water jetting section was done, I took my two BVS sigils down to the woodshop and filed down the very sharp edges. That was my first step into post processing. After filing it down, I then went to the sandblaster in the wood shop to get a uniform finish as well as getting rid of any of the rough edges that I didn’t get when I filed it. That was my second step into the post processing.

I am not going to lie I love the look of the metal when it is sandblasted. It has such a nice finish. However, for the assignment I knew I had to add another layer of post processing. I decided that I wanted to integrate the colors of both Batman and Superman into this symbol, but keep the bat on the top to be ideally black. In order to do what I wanted to do, I wanted to create vinyl stickers to act as both a mask and as a cover for negative space. The files are shown below

I used the original file and made several masks and pieces that could be used as masks. I then ran those files through the vinyl cutter. The final stickers/masks are shown below.

Below shows one of the steps I took while painting. I had to do the painting in multiple coats in order to make sure the paint didn’t start piling up.

The main places where the vinyl sticker masks helped a lot were the Bat, the outer edge, and the inner part. I then added yellow paint splatter for the comic book feel.

After that, I then saw that the back was filled with splatter so then I added a coat of solid red to make sure that the back also looked nice.

With the diamond being as intricate as it was, I realized that it would be messy and unorganized if I was to engrave on the back, therefore the steps and my name would have to be done using a sticky note. This works out well, as upon showing my brother and my best friend this, they called dibs.

This project for me was especially fun and rewarding in part to the fact that I was learned how to work and manipulate metal for the first time in a subtractive fabrication rather than in a additive manner (such as welding). Not only that, but being able to make cool symbols in Adobe and manifest them with the water jet was so amazing.

Cost

Not gonna lie, I rep Home Depot so hard, so everything on the cost will have to be from the best store Home Depot.

The cost of a 24″ by 36″ square piece of aluminum is around $16.00.

The cost of a singular spray can is around $6.00, so we will assume $18.00 for the spray can.

This took me around 4 hours to make and get to looking nice, so assuming my cost of labor is $7.25, that makes it to be $29.00.

In total to make this, with no regards for the machine itself, it costs $51.00 with most of the cost attributing for my cost of labor.