I started my metal cutting and post processing assignment by setting up my adobe illustrator files. I knew my file being made correctly would play a huge role in how my cut turns out, so I made sure that the Turkiye flag image I uploaded had no background, and I used the image tracing feature to turn the image into vectors. I then went back to check my lines in detail, and saw that the moon and the star had duplicate lines really close together, which could mess up my cut. I manually deleted these lines, and emailed the file to myself to cut!

I had my first cut during the waterjet tutorial, which is where things went a little wrong actually. There was some issue with my file, so my moon and star wouldn’t show up on the waterjet cutter software. Madison helped me fix this issue, and we then went over the tutorial and put the pieces to cut. We ended up having a lot of issues with our cut unfortunately. We had set the starting point on the outside, so the diamond shape, which resulted in the diamond piece moving out of place and resulting in the cut below:

Through the tutorial I learned that I should always set the cut on the inner image, so when I came in to work on my diamond again, I made sure that the machine started from the inner shapes, and then moved on to the diamond. However, I was not able to set the starting point to be inside when I tried making two diamonds in one go, and a TA advised me to do one diamond at a time, so that is what I did. And my cut was perfect!

I went ahead with another cut, and then it was time for my post-processing. I started this phase by sandblasting both of my diamonds, which was such a satisfying experience. You can see a huge difference in color and texture before and after sandblasting:

 

 

 

 

 

 

My second post-processing was filing. I didn’t like how sharp the edges of my diamonds were, and since I was planning to use them as keychains, I would need them to be less of a hazard. I used a file to smooth out the edges on both sides of both diamonds. This was a fairly long process since steel is a harder material, filing it down takes some patience. 

After I was done filing, the edges felt so much better, and I could run my fingers over it without being pricked with metal. However, there were some scratched on the flat surface of my metals from the file, so I went back an sandblasted the diamonds again after filing. After that, my diamonds were smoother than ever!

My third and final post-processing was going to be powder coating, but to my wonderful luck, the powder coating stopped working not even a few minutes before I was about to do it. I really wanted my piece to have a red finish, so my other two options were spray painting or using vinyl stickers. I was not very confident with either, but I still gave it a go. I thought spray painting would be chill, boy was I wrong. I struggled greatly with having the right strokes and ended up with a mess. 

I did not enjoy the process of spray painting, nor did I like the product I got, so I was back at the sandblaster. Once the paint was dry, I took off the spray painted layer off of my metals. Here is a sneak at how unpleasant my spray painting turned out:

The next option was using vinyl stickers. Now this felt like a harder option, since aligning the sharp star and moon perfectly with a sticker felt impossible for me. When cutting out my stickers (I cut out 4), I made sure to scale up my diamond, and scale down the moon and stars to give myself some room to work with. After putting on the vinyl, I went along the edges inside and outside of my diamond, cutting out the excess borders with an x-acto knife. 

Now, this was my first time using vinyl, and my first time post-processing metal, so it might not be the most beautiful and perfect piece. However, I still got the look that I wanted, and I am actually really excited to give one of these to one of my lucky siblings! Here is the final product:

I actually really enjoyed metal cutting and post-processing, as many mishaps as there were. I would definitely go back and cut something on my own, and hopefully get to do powder coating. I was a little jealous of the powder coated pieces that were made, I love how powder coating looks, but I also love my keychains as they are !!

When cleaning up my work space, I didn’t drain out all of the water since other people were using the waterjet cutter immediately after me. Cleaned-up work areas:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To break down the finances, I will, once again, use the minimum wage of Houston. I will also include a rental cost for the machines of the hours I used them.

Here it is:

Time: $36.25

5 hours → $7.25/ hour

Materials: $14

0.08” thick steel → $8

Red spray paint → $5

Red vinyl sticker → $1

Machine: $400

(estimated)

Total: $450.25