Metal Football

• Lily

From the very beginning when the project was explained to us I knew exactly what I wanted to create. The Scuderia Ferrari F1 logo.

I got to work in Adobe Illustrator. The file itself took much longer than I’d care to admit (in total, probably somewhere from 2-3 hours), but I already had the entire project planned out. I would plasma cut the shield, angle grind the back, sand blast both sides, potentially file or sand if necessary, powder coat the entire thing yellow, create four vinyls and then spray paint with black, red, white, and green. It would be lengthy, but worth it.

Fast forward to my TA session on the plasma cutter. When we ran the dry run, the machine would go through the entire cut nicely. But when we turned the laser on, the plasma cutter would stop halfway through and not finish the cut. We tried this twice, to no avail. I went back to my Adobe file and traced the outline rather than using what was left from the image. I returned to the machine shop and successfully cut out the logo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

However, I was informed it was much too small. I didn’t use the entire space in the diamond, so I would have to again return to Adobe Illustrator and recut the metal on the plasma cutter. Well, the more I considered my project, the more I recognized how difficult it would be. I have little to no experience with metal. To create such a complicated piece would be achievable I’m sure, but would require dedication that I don’t have during midterm season and with family’s weekend approaching. So, I shifted gears.

One of my many passions is flag football. I decided I would instead make a football. I converted a .png to a .svg using an online resource, and then placed the .svg football in Adobe Illustrator.

Once my file was complete, I returned to the machine shop to plasma cut. I cut three footballs in case there were to be an issue with post-processing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After cutting the footballs, I headed over to the angle grinder. I noticed a lot of areas that needed to be grinded off as a consequence of the plasma cutter.

Originally, I thought the angle grinder was supposed to make the entire surface of the football shiny. So, with the first football, that was my aim. But as I continued going over certain areas of the metal, for a long time, they didn’t become shiny. And, the material itself began to slowly break off because some areas were thin.
I asked one of the TAs about this issue, and she suggested I use the sandblaster, as the angle grinder is really only to remove material, not make the surface shiny. So, I entered the wet lab. Note that I sandblasted the one I had angle grinded too much first to ensure it would actually achieve the desired affect rather than angle grinding the other two and then risking sandblasting without knowing the outcome. I tested it on a little patch, saw that it worked, and went back to angle grind my other two. I moved forward with just the other two as I didn’t love how little pieces were breaking off of the first one.

When angle grinding this time, I focused only on the material that was built up, not the entire surface.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After angle grinding both footballs, I took them to the sandblaster. I spent a lot of time going over and over each area meticulously, so both appeared very shiny and nice when I was finished. However, as seen on the photo on the bottom left, near the laces and edges around the negative space, some material was still piled atop the surface of the football.

 

 

 

 

 

I thought perhaps filing would be a solution. So, I clamped my metal down to the table and focused on the interior of the strip of negative space. Specifically the interior bottom right corner, as pictured on the bottom left. I kept filing — not until the bump was completely gone, out of concern for the thin material on the exterior of the football, but until it blended more with everything else. This is pictured on the bottom right on the right side in the bottom corner (the piece was flipped over).

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wasn’t satisfied with the filing. So, I once again returned to the angle grinder to get some of the very last spots grinded down. Below is a before and after of angle grinding. Particularly around the laces it is evident that the angle grinding was successful in removing built up material. However, I remained worried about the tool removing too much material. But, this is something I recognized I would have to deal with. I determined it was better to have missing material than material pooled up randomly. And, I would keep moving forward with the pieces and attempt to smooth those areas out down the line.

 

 

 

 

After angle grinding, I returned to the sandblaster to even out the appearance of the surface of the pieces and remove scuff marks.

 

I remained unsatisfied with my pieces. I took a class called “Beginning Jewelry and Metalsmithing” in high school, where we were given metal and we used a little saw to cut out the pieces before filing and sanding and then soldering, stamping, forming, etc. I expected this piece to be as perfect as my pieces in high school were. So, I figured I may as well attempt to sand inside the negative space to remove the inconsistencies on the edges.

 

I know metal uses a much higher grit than wood, so I grabbed 320 and 400. I began with the 320 grit, sanding for a while on the inside. I was resilient, but when I recognized that honestly it wasn’t making a difference, I finally went inside. I then tried filing again. But the thinnest part of the files at the OEDK are still thicker than I would have liked. It was difficult to file inside the missing strips, and impossible to file inside the laces. I tried for a bit, but when I started removing a bit of material from spots I didn’t want removed because of the file’s width, I decided I would have to deal with what I have. In an ideal world I would have ordered a smaller file and used that to fix all of the imperfections on my pieces. But rather than extending the process and not making any progress and making things worse for myself, I moved onto the next step.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I asked a lab tech if I should sandblast before powder coating since there were some small fingerprint marks. He said it shouldn’t affect the powder coat at all, so I went to the wet lab, grabbed the powder coat machine and took it outside to begin the process. I couldn’t find brown, the actual color of a football, so I decided to use my favorite color — purple. I got paperclips and attached both of my pieces to them, hanging them from the wire netting so I could powder coat from a good angle. I made sure to put on a mask, protective eyewear, and gloves to avoid the powder getting everywhere (*spoiler alert: it was all over my legs and clothes and even on my face slightly somehow*). I screwed the powder I chose onto the machine, connected the wire clip to the netting to get conductivity, connected the air hose to the machine, and plugged everything in and turned everything on. I nervously pushed the button in my left hand (Winson said he did it wrong and got shocked all the way up his arm) and began to powder coat. I tried my best to apply it evenly based on visual appearance. I used short blasts, like we were taught in class. When both looked evenly covered, I turned everything off and unplugged everything and cleaned up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I returned to the wet lab with my purple footballs when I realized I forgot to preheat the oven. Instead of waiting for it to preheat and then placing my projects inside, I felt spontaneous so I hung both footballs from the rack, turned the oven on to the designated temperature, and left them to cook.

Since it’s normally 20 minutes in the oven when it’s already hot, I decided to remove them after 25 minutes.

Overall, they turned out pretty good! The timing ended up working out perfectly, as everything was fully dry when I removed it. There was some pooling because the coat wasn’t applied perfectly even, but for the most part I am happy with the results. I added the post-processing steps onto the back, and I was done.
As always, here is a photo of my last clean workspace (where I wrote the post-processing steps).
For cost, one could consider:

Total: $93.02

Print Friendly, PDF & Email