To start, I designed my diamond design in Adobe Illustrator. I chose an elegant mountain cut-out design as it reminded me of my home state of Utah. I used the line and shape tools to create the design I wanted.
After creating my design, I thought I could send it to the plasma cutter without issues. I, however, overlooked some aspects of my design that required some iterative design changes to get the desired outcome. With the help of the teaching team, I had to first revise the problem of overlapping shapes in my design that caused the plasma cutter to stop to avoid cutting over dead space. I did this by merging the shapes into one continuous shape. I then had to remove unnecessary lines in my design by deleting unnecessary layers until I was left with just a path for my diamond shape and a path for my smooth mountain shape. At this point, my design was finally able to cut properly using the plasma cutter and following the instructions provided on the nearby laminated sheets. I was left with two diamonds with my mountain design properly cut out.
The cutting process left a lot of ugly dross behind on the backside, so I used the angle grinder to cut it all away and leave a smooth surface on both sides. To continue processing the metal, I used a file to further smooth the edges, especially the corners of the diamond and the sharp edges of my mountain design. It took quite a bit of filing to achieve my desired results as the metal was steel which is tougher to file than aluminum.
To refine the face of my diamonds and remove the rust left behind from the plasma-cutting process, I used the sandblaster. After sandblasting, I powder-coated both diamonds purple and put them into the oven to finish. I chose purple as a nice majestic color to match the grandeur of the mountain peaks. A region on one of my diamonds did not get fully coated and so was not fully purple like my other one. I was unfortunately running late to another commitment on campus and did not have time to recoat. To rectify this design flaw, I chose to put blue tape over both mountains and used an X-acto blade to get the tape flush with the metal edges. I used this space as the region where I wrote the steps I took to create my diamonds. This also gives the appearance of the blue sky above the purple majestic mountains. Also shown is my clean work area after powder coating.
Here is my price breakdown:
| Cost Type | Cost | Price | Source | Quantity | Total |
| Materials | Steel | $14.93/108 in^2 | Homedepot.com | 0.42
(~30 in^2 for diamonds + ~15 in^2 for one failed diamond = 45 in^2) |
$6.27 |
| Blue tape | $6.19/roll (60 yards) | Homedepot.com | 1/60 | $0.10 | |
| Blasting Abrasive | $77.59/25 lbs | Homedepot.com | 1/50 | $1.55 | |
| Purple powder coating powder | $57.99/6 bottles | Eastwood.com | 1/24 | $2.42 | |
| Labor | Plasma Cutter Operator | $19.89/hour | Ziprecruiter.com | 1/4 | $4.97 |
| Post-processing | $14.39/hour | Zippia.com | 1.5 | $21.59 | |
| Powder-coater | $18.61 | Ziprecruiter.com | 1/4 | $4.65 | |
| Overhead | Facility Cost (Machine Time) | $20.16/job | Plasmaspider | 1 | $20.16 |
| Quality Control | $13/hour | Zippia.com | 1/6 | $2.17 | |
| Design | Prototyping Engineering and Development | $35/hour | Red Fox Innovations | 1 | $35 |
| Adobe Illustrator License | $263.88/year | Adobe.com | 1/365 | $0.72 | |
| Misc. | Waste and Scrap | $13.50/hour | Ziprecruiter.com | 1/6 | $2.25 |
| Total | $101.85 |
