For this project, I am going to use the plasma cutter to cut out a designed diamond shape and post-process it. The first step is to design the pattern I want to have on my diamond. With very little hesitation, I chose to use the Batman logo as the hollowed pattern on the steel. What can be cooler than a black spray-painted Batman logo?!

 

Then, I decided to make this cut out of steel. Steel is harder and is easier to post-process on it. I transferred my Illustrator file into a G-code file and started the cutting.

This is the outcome of the cut diamond pieces.

As we can see, the edge of the cut isn’t that clean. There is melted steel sticking to the edge of the cut. This greatly affects the visual appearance of this diamond. To get rid of the dross, I need to use an angle grinder to grind down the dross. This process takes a fair amount of time and inflicts some hearing loss 🙁 (remember to use an ear plug next time!). Nevertheless, the outcome of angle grinding is satisfactory. There are no visible dross any more and the surface turns shiny.

However, the edge of the diamond is still sharp enough to make a cut on the skin (shown below), I planned to use a file to make it smoother.

Now this looks much better! When I put my fingers on it, I can feel it is smooth, not hurting me!

Since I want to spray paint the diamond, the surface of the metal cannot be shiny and the rust needs to come off. This is where we need to use a sandblaster to clean the surface of the diamond. This will make the paint adhere to the steel diamond better.

Finally, it is time to spray paint these pieces. I chose to spray paint these pieces in black since this will match the Batman logo the best. I spray-painted one side, let it dry, and then spray-painted the other side. Now, I get a nice, cool black Batman diamond.

This project took me about 3 hours to finish. I will offer myself a salary of $15 per hour. The steel in total probably cost $15. The spray paint and the sand used by the sandblaster will probably cost another $15. In all, these diamond pieces cost around $75.