Hello, this is my water jet cut metal diamond! For the design, I wanted to keep things simple as I knew the waterjet cutter rather intimidated me. I knew I wanted a dual side diamond so I opted for a cat with a fish and dead fish underneath it, so I could have visual creativity at the bottom. I began with this design in adobe illustrator.

I made everything I wanted to cut out a fill with a stroke of 0.072 pts (same as laser cutter).  Once completed, I was able to transfer this to the laserpro program eazypezy, except it didn’t like one of my fish so I had to scrape him for the sake of my stress. After tediously figuring out a piece of metal I could use to cut my piece, I made sure it was aluminum and measured the thickness of the metal.

 

I followed all instructions provided in the waterjetcutter, and didn’t have an issue with my design. After duplicating the process, I was happy with the cut of the two pieces. My post processing looked like sandblasting, metal filing round edges, sandblasting again, then metal wire brush for shine. Upon looking for creative ideas for this project, I really liked Ellie Kasradze metal finish for her piece. Taking inspiration from her design, I decided to do a similar finishing of having the bottom portion of the metal be shiny and reflective. This was accomplished with sandblasting and wire brush.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Overall, I am really happy about how my piece turned out. The reflective metal part reminds me of reflective water, which was the intention. I would be curious to see how this finish would perform with a clear powder coat.

 

Cost Estimations:

Labor: 3hrs x $17.00/hr (I value my time)=  $51.00

Aluminum 0.062 mm Plate: $12.73

Wire Brush: $4.41

TOTAL:  $68.14