Aww nooooo the plasma cutter was broken and we were FORCED to use the waterjet!! SO sad. SUCH perfect diamonds.
Anyways
This project was definitively a nice change of pace in terms of the whole process not being a complete disaster. Of course, it wouldn’t have been a Delatte project if there weren’t a few bumps but overall I am happy with what I was able to complete.
I started with the diamond shapes provided to us on the canvas page, and found the closest looking dog to my dog (Febe) on the nounproject website. It took a whole 2 minutes to find, slap on the diamond, insert our aluminum sheet, and start cutting. We even began chanting ” WOMEN IN STEM” while fist bumping the air because it was “too easy”.
Alas, it was not. We only got through about 3 fist bumps before we realized I chose the wrong starting path, an that the outside of my diamond cut before my cute little Febe. The diamond shifted out of its position, and the noun wasn’t cut.
Not the end of the world, we simply reuploaded the design and readjusted the starting position of the cutter, and chose the correct path this time. We started the cut again, and we finished one whole perfect diamond this time before starting our chanting and fist bumping again. Naturally, this invoked bad juju and we received the following errors on the software:
These exact problems continued to happen 1/2 way through two more diamonds. We shut everything down, and rebooted it all and, with the help of Pablo reminding us to flip down the blast guard like safe makers, were able to cut the second diamond fully.
“WOMEN IN STEM! WOMEN IN STEM! WOMEN IN STEM (and Pablo)!!”
Now with two identical diamonds cut I was able to move onto post processing. I could not stand the feel of the outside grittiness so I went straight for filing and smoothing the edges. I forgot I was working with such a soft metal, so my first edges file took a good bit off and some larger chunks were removed from the edge. Again, not the end of the world. I continued filing the edges until I was happy with how they felt to the touch.
For my second post processing method, I wanted to sand blast my diamond. I really liked how I thought I remembered it making the metal look super shiny and almost glittery!! So cute in my head! “WOMEN IN STEM!” I was going to put a clear glass on the sand blasted pieces to keep the sparkly effect and call it a day. Naturally, that was not the case… instead they looked like this:
I had a trip out of the state for almost 5 days and didn’t return until tonight (10/10) and the diamonds are due tomorrow… so I was unable to get in the wetlab of the OEDK in enough time to powder coat. I decided to just spray paint my pieces instead and I remembered there being a really pretty light pink color of paint, so I wasn’t too sad!
Of course that is now nowhere to be found… so I settled for blue. I applied as thin and even coats as I could to both sides of my diamonds, and while I do wish I could have been here this weekend to really make them look great, I’m happy with how they turned out! I might be biased, but it’s hard to hate something that has a tiny cut out of Febe on it.
Also, my undergrad’s baseball team was called the Diamond Dawgs ( we were the bulldogs) hence the name of this post that only I will understand. #GoDawgs #EverLoyalBe #LoyalBlue
Cost Analysis:
| Cost Analysis for Waterjet Cut Diamonds | ||||
| Material | Cost | Amount | Quantity Needed | Total Cost |
| 1/4″ Aluminum Sheet | $18.47 | 1 12×12 | 2 3×5 | $3.84 |
| Facilities | $250 | 1 (Month) | 4 hrs | $1.40 |
| Prototyping Engineer | $38 | 1 hr | 1 hr | $38 |
| Waterjet Operator | $21 | 1 hr | 20 min | $7 |
| Spray Painter | $17 | 1 hr | 1 hr | $17 |
| Quality Control | $41 | 1 hr | 1 hr | $41 |
| Total Cost | $108.24 | |||
