This week in EDES 210, we learned about metal cutting processes and post-processing methods. I used what I learned to create two metal diamonds which were intended to be identical, but inevitably developed their own unique characteristics along the way.
I began by using the plasma cutter to cut out my metal diamonds. The illustration I chose to use was a smiley face cutout. I wanted to keep it simple because I was scared to overcomplicate the design after the warning we were given about complex cuts not working with the machine.
Illustrator file used to cut the diamond
Funny enough, my simple design still ended up messing with the plasma cutteer. The negative space in the cutouts was pretty small, which made the lead-in cuts a little funky. These can be observed in the corner of the eyes and mouth in the finished cut, as there is a little more material taken out than intended.
Metal diamonds post-plasma cutting
After cutting out the pieces, I took my metal to the angle grinder to get rid of all the excess metal protruding from the cuts. This step went very smoothly and took less than five minutes! I was very impressed with how quickly the angle grinder could get rid of extra metal on my pieces.
Surface after angle grinding
Next I went to the sand blaster to prepare the surface of the metal to be coated. Sand blasting took way longer than I thought. I spent about 15 minutes sand blasting each piece, and even then I don’t think my sandblasting was thorough enough because the powder coat finish seemed to be affected by it down the line. Sand blasting was fun regardless, but I could’ve done without the hand cramping!
Surface after sandblasting
Finally, I decided to go for a powder coat finish on my diamonds. My favorite color is blue, so I decided to use blue powder. The powder coating process was very simple and quick, it only took about 5 minutes to setup and coat my materials. Once it appeared my diamonds were fully coated, I took them to the wetlab to cure in the oven. I left them in for approximately 20 minutes with the oven preheated. One mistake to note is that when putting them in, one of my diamonds made contact with the wall which dirtied the oven and may have ruined some of the finish. I took proper steps to scrape the powder off the wall once I was done.
Diamonds after a few minutes in the oven
It was at this step that my failure to sand blast properly really showed. Unfortunately as the powder set in, I could see the areas that weren’t properly coated because of the surface impurities missed in sandblasting. They appeared as small streaks or spots that I missed in the process. I let the powder coat finish setting in and took it out of the oven to cool off.
Funnily enough, the impurities brought out a really cool space/galaxy theme (NASA reference!) to my pieces. The impurities almost look like stars and the uneven powder coating caused a natural gradient of blue to appear on the surface that make it look like the night sky. While I recognize this as a mistake, I do genuinely like how it came out, with the exception of a few really ugly dark spots from the spots I missed on the sandblaster. While they aren’t exactly identical pieces, I do think they look really cool!
Final Product: Galactic Smiley Faces!
Finally, I used tape to label the back of the pieces with the post-processing steps.
Step labels on diamonds
Overall, I had alot of fun learning to work with metal in the OEDK. It’s definitely not something I have much experience with, so it was cool to be able to experience firsthand the importance of post-processing. Similar to past projects, I observed how crucial attention to detail is at every single step of manufacturing. In the future, I’ll make sure to sandblast for that extra five minutes, and be extremely gentle when placing my pieces in the oven (metaphorically of course, I likely won’t be doing this project again anytime soon).
Last used workspace (pure chaos)
My last used workspace was the oven. As you can see above, it’s incredibly dirty. I cleaned off the spot on the wall that I got blue powder melted on (circled in red), but when I went to take the picture of the workspace it seemed others had baked all sorts of colors into the oven. I attempted to clean some of it during my lab assistant shift, but alot of it is very stubborn (especially the powder stuck on the glass!) and Fernando told me to just leave it alone and called it “art”.
Cost Breakdown:
Materals:
Steel 24×36 in sheet metal (Lowes.com) : $29.98 -> 2 diamonds about 1/25 of sheet -> $1.2
12 oz Powder Coat Paint (Harbor Freight) $10 -> ~1/4 oz for 2 diamonds -> $ 0.20
Labor:
3 hours in OEDK : $10/hr*3 hr -> $30
Machine Costs:
We used alot of different machines for this project, so lets say we were able to use these machines for a fair price of $5/hr on average.
$5/hr*3 hr = $15
This brings the total cost to make the 2 diamonds to about $46.4. Most of this cost comes from labor and machine costs, while the material costs were relatively low this time around when only accounting for the portion of material I used. If using the raw cost of the full materials (full metal sheet, full bottle of powder) the cost would be much higher.
