For this assignment a plasma cut diamond shape needed to be done on a sheet of metal. For our project, we chose Aluminum as our material. It is usually shiny, lighter in color and cleaner than iron. However, it is not magnetic, so we encountered some issues when the angle rounding step came about.
The diamond dimensions were standard for everyone in the class and we had the ability to change the appearance of the diamonds without changing their dimensions. We decided to write our first names initials on each diamond (“S” for Sarah, “G” for Gloria).
We tried cutting our files, which we had to convert from ai format to dxf for the machine’s software to read it. These files gave us some problems as the converter we used online did not do a good job at converting. Then, after some troubleshooting, we saw that the machine was cutting the diamonds several times. We asked some of our classmates for help, turns out we needed to make sure the two diamonds were grouped so that the machine read them as a single item. However, when cutting, we encountered an additional issue. The diamonds were scaled larger than they actually were when transferred to the TorchMate interface even though they were grouped together and the machine did not cut them several times. We tried one more time making the files from scratch, and ultimately, when everything seemed fine and ready-to-go, the machine would put the origin somewhere else when running the dry cut. At this point, we decided to stop cutting and wasting material and reach out to Dr. Wettergreen and the TAs. Hayden advised us on how to troubleshoot this problem through email and we tried cutting one last time. Fortunately, it worked this time!
The letters in the middle were too small, so the plasma cutter did not do a great job at cutting the metal and the letters looked a bit distorted. We needed to post-process our pieces.
As aluminum is not magnetic, it wouldn’t attach to the magnetic clamp, and it would be ideal to angle run. Besides that, since the cut was cleaner than when it is made with iron, we decided to just “clean” our edges by filing. It took some time and I accidentally broke one of the “S” when filing. But they turned out really pretty and clean afterwards.
Finally, we sprayed painted our pieces. I chose a silver spray paint and the finish came out pretty clean and uniform.
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