This week’s project is to make something out of metal. The stereotype surrounding metal is that it’s usually chunky and heavy. For this project, I am to make something that counters that stereotype.
To follow the Pokemon theme, I decided to make the bow/feeler on Sylveon.
A photo of sylveon. I am trying to make the bow.
So first I started with making the Illustrator file by tracing the bow, and used the water jet to cut it out.
Cutting out the design using the water jet.
In order to create a lighter “flowy” feeling, I picked the thinnest steel and slighly bent it.
The first time I tried to cut the metal, it was missing a cut. So I readjusted the path.
The next step was to file it down.
Since the steel was so thin, I wanted to make sure it didn’t snap as I was filing, so I placed it very deep down in the vice.
After filing it to make sure the edges aren’t too sharp, I then sand-blasted it to create the rough texture.
A comparison between the sand-blasted and non-sand-blasted pieces.
The last step is to color it.
I wanted to color it so that it’s pink in the center and everywhere else is white. At the started, I also wanted to add the pink and blue strips at the end of the feelers, but then I looked at the ratios and found it weird (the ribbons looked to short that way, so I ended up only coloring the center pink).
Cutting out the vinyl stickers to cover up the places that aren’t white.
I first colored the center and the ends the color I needed, then covered it with vinyl stickers and sprayed the whole thing white.
However, after spraying the whole thing white, I realized that the pink layer of spray paint is way too thick and it’s making the white spray paint really uneven. So I decided to sand off most of the spray paint, then recolor the whole thing.
Sanding off the spray paint.
After peeling off the sticker, I realized that I might’ve put on the sticker before the spray paint was fully dry.
You can see the middle part isn’t completely colored. The vinyl sticker peeled off a lot of the spray paint. So I covered everything else I re-sprayed the middle pink.
This time it worked well, so then I sanded it and engraved the steps on the back on the laser cutter.
Sanding down the extra spray paint. This one is especially rough because there was a paper towel that landed on it when it was drying overnight.
The rougher one that had a paper towel on it while drying.
However, a few issues arose when engraving. The first was that because of how thin the ribbon is, it was really difficult to align the text precisely. So for the first one that was the engraved, the last text was slightly off. Another issue was that it revealed the earlier layers of spray paint (as can be seen in the photo below).
Engraved back. As can be seen, some of the older layers of paint (blue and pink) were revealed.
Lastly, I added a thin clear coat as protection and it’s done.
Cost Estimation:
Steel Plate:
~$20
Vinyl Sticker:
~$2
Spray Paint:
~1/8 of a bottle = $0.75
Labor:
~7 hours * $7.25/hour = $50.75
Total Cost:
$73.5
