For this project, I used the plasma cutter to cut a diamond with a star cutout in the middle. For plasma cutting, we used steel and it was a lot of fun working with the machine. However, I did have to wait a long time to wait my turn which was a fun bonding moment for ENGI students but not time efficient. Here are the cutouts (below).

I used an angle grinder to get the dross away. Here are before and afters of the angel grinding. You can see the difference it makes. I then also filed the edges and the inside of the diamond to make it more smooth.

I then used the sandblaster and sandblasted both sides of the diamond. It gave it a cloudy, matte look. I then used a clear coat over it to give it some shine back and hung it up to dry.

I didn’t really work in any of the spaces. For spray painting, I hung up my diamonds between two cinder blocks in the OEDK dumpster area.

Cost! For labor, Texas minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, but let’s say that the boss is generous and gives me a whopping $9 per hour, and I spent about 5 hours on it; that would be $45 for those hours. For the steel , it was about 1×2 ft, .075″ thick which is about $19 according to MetalsDepot. The plasma cutting table is $20,000 for the plasma cutting table, but because I only used it for about 15 mins, we can cut that down to about $50. The sandblaster is $200, and I used it for about 15 mins, so lets say about $45. And lets add $5 for the spray paint. The total would be $50 then!