Before this project, I had been in the Machine Shop once, and that was only to bend a single sheet of aluminum. I had seen the plasma cutter before, but it always seemed somewhat intimidating. Throughout this project, I quickly learned how easy the cutter was to use and managed to make a metal cut out of my home state.
The main part of this project was, of course, using the plasma cutter. I loaded my design into the software, positioned the cutter, and then simply pressed “cut” to use it. In all, the process of cutting only took about 10 minutes. Quite a bit of material was left from the cutting, but that was easily ground down using the angle grinder.
Grinding down the excess material
After I ground down the leftover material, I decided to sandblast my piece. This was a pretty fun and somewhat satisfying part of the process as I got to use what is basically a sand gun to remove the surface material on my piece.
Using the sandblaster!
Once I finished sanding, I was able to spray paint my piece on both sides, and I was left with a pretty nice final product! (I really enjoyed this project, but boy am I glad that we get to use the waterjet cutter in the future!)
Spray painting the piece!
According to metalsdepot.com, a 1’x2′ sheet of 1/16″ steel is $17.74. Given that our diamond-shaped cut outs were approximately 3″x4″, each of our cuts would have costed about $2.96 in materials alone. With the cost of spray paint and the use of the different machines around the OEDK, I would assume that each of our finished products would have been approximately $5.
