What’s up fellow EDES 210 classmates! Today I present to you, a short but very exciting project that is entirely different from anything else we’ve done in the class up until this point!

To start, we first created/designed a diamond-shaped pattern in Adobe Illustrator, and of course I had to pick an owl as my design (the football team is having a great season)! While seemingly a pretty simple task, I needed to take into account the inherent lack of precision from the plasma cutter we were using, so I decided to create the shape of an owl from scratch. Shortly after this first step, I attended the training workshop provided by the wonderful teaching assistants in EDES 210 while also getting to cut out the designs in metal! Seen below are the two diamond-shaped metal pieces that I completed, with most of the details meeting my expectations!

Of course, these were simply just basic shapes, but already very exciting to see for someone who has never used machinery like this before! Following this pivotal step, I had to use both an angle grinder and hand tools to further remove any excess material that remained from the plasma cutter process. While admittedly a bit tedious, the results were outstanding and added some necessary details back to the design! Once this preparation was done, I quickly asked some of the lab assistants to allow me to use the sand-blaster for refining the texture!

Seen here you can start to see the true color of the steel we were working with, which was already quite impressive! Not only did the texture of the metal pieces feel much more even and comfortable, but the consistency in color was also quite nice. While I did briefly consider leaving the color as is, I ultimately decided against this since there happened to be a spray paint color that I really liked! As you will see, the vibrant blue color I chose ended up looking quite unique, with the variety of lighting in the OEDK further adding to its complexity!

Perfect! It came out exactly how I imagined after being dried on the OEDK loading dock, which was a surprise given that the humidity outside was very high compared to other days! Definitely a much shorter project than I expected, but hopefully this was still an interesting read for you! With all of this said and done, it is time to discuss how much this project cost!

Here is some accounting:

Labor – 4 hours at an hourly rate of $15 (average student employment wage) equals $60

Materials – 1/8 inch sheet of steel (around the size of two diamond shapes) is $30 to $35 and blue spray paint costing $10 (from The Home Depot)

Tools – Assuming the plasma cutter and sand-blaster are provided to keep project costs realistic, the additional hand tools I used for sanding cost $15 (also from The Home Depot)

Total Cost – $115 to $120, which is expensive but feels more reasonably priced than other projects!

As always, here’s a picture of my cleaned up workspace: