Hello again from Houston, Texas these two weeks I worked on learning how to cut and process metal pieces. For this task, I had to build two metal diamonds with an inside logo that I selected to represent me. For this project, I selected the map of Colombia and Oklahoma which are places that really represent me as I grew up in Colombia and went to college at the University of Oklahoma. To start this project I had to download the diamond template into Illustrator and open the noun project website to download the SVG file that works in Illustrator. Then, I sketched both diamonds in Illustrator placing the maps in the middle of each diamond. Moreover, I went to the wet lab in the Oedk to use the PhotoMax waterjet that I learned how to use during the prototyping class which was very useful while I was trying to build my diamonds. To use the waterjet, I also went through the instructions on the computer of the Oedk to be sure about the usage of the waterjet.

First, I downloaded the Ai file into the Waterjet computer, and then, I built a path in which the waterjet was going to cut each diamond and map. Finally, I did a dry run to see if the path was translated well to the waterjet machine. During the first try to cut, I forgot to zero out the machine after doing the dry run which was a problem because the machine started cutting the diamonds in the wrong initial position. Furthermore, I learned from my mistake and zeroed out the machine for my second attempt which was successful and surprisingly took just a few minutes to cut my diamond which was very impressive as it was very precise and detailed. After cutting the diamond, I went to file the edges so it took some of the imperfections out of the edges that were created when cutting with the waterjet machine. At first, I made the mistake of taking a wood file for this process but my classmates corrected me immediately. Then, I sand-blasted my diamonds which was a lot of fun because I could see how it corrected some of the scratches that the metal had after the filing and waterjet cut.

Finally, I decided to use spray paint to finalize my diamond with a nice color that represented both of the places that I used in my diamonds. So I decided to paint the Oklahoma diamond with red paint and the Colombia diamond with blue and red paint as we didn’t have yellow paint to have the three colors of the flag. Spray paint wasn’t as easy as I thought, On my first try the paint had a lot of spots so I had to put another layer of paint. However, in the end, I had nice painted diamonds that represented what I wanted to show with this project.

Cost Analysis:

Material	Cost	Amount/Hours	Total Cost
12″ x 18″ metal sheet	$9.48	1	$9.48
Prototyping Engineer	$39	1	$39
Logo Designer	$27	1	$27
WaterJet machine	$30	1	$30
WaterJet Operator	$24	1	$24
Total			$129.48