So here’s the Diamond.

 

Let’s start from the top.

I initially really liked the idea of cutting something into the metal that could be light from behind to make a cool pattern, illusion, or light effect of the sort. I did some light googling and settled on making a traffic/warning sign of sorts.

After some sketches, I really liked how the triangle shape fit in half the Diamond and wanted to stick with that concept. I tested out using regular signs and distorting them to fit the Diamond but the effect was lackluster because most traffic signs are already diamonds and not squares. I decided to put to pedestrian crossing man into my triangle. I didn’t like the idea of leaving the bottom with so much empty space so I decided to put an exclamation point at the bottom. After a few hoops and loops getting Adobe Illustrator to cooperate, I resulted in this design:

While putting the design into the water jet program, due to the way Adobe joins ends a lot of my corners were triangles which made the design look a bit funky. It also took me a bit to figure out how the post feature worked but we got there. I had to go back to Adobe to fix my ugly corners using the Shape tool then I was finally able to cut.

When it comes to material I had to dig through the scraps to find pieces that would fit another diamond. I settled on 0.53 in and 1.33 in pieces of aluminum. I cut the 0.53 in piece first after doing 50 million dry runs to make sure the shape would fit. During the cut I caused myself a problems that I ended up successfully troubleshooting. The first attempt of the cut did not go through….

There was not enough material to start over so I simply moved nothing and concluded that since the thickness was correct in the program, maybe the machine needed more abrasive than I thought it did. So I refilled it and tried again. Some pieces cut through but that simply did not work. I chose to persevere and realized that while I was testing to see which pieces fit the diamond, I settled on a piece a different thickness than when I moved the nozzle. The nozzle was far too high now. Sadly when setting the nozzle again the metal ever so slightly moved. I cut again and everything cut through but now the piece was a little bit janky 🙁

The second cut was perfect though now that I knew what went wrong.

So I must file my cuts. More specifically my ugly cut. I struggled to find files that would fit on the inside of my holes but after trial and error I made major progress. Not perfection but progress for sure.

I then went back into the wet lab and sandblasted my pieces.

Finally I went over both sides with 2 coats of brown spray paint. I would’ve preferred black but we have to work with what we got.