This week, our task was to cut out a diamond-shaped metal object and apply different post-processing techniques to the object.

PART 1: ALL IS NORMAL

Our trifling journey begins slowly. I had no idea what design I’d wanted to cut, espescially since we were informed that the plasma cutter couldn’t cut very intricate shapes. After a couple days of thinking, I decided to go with a cool logo from a game I play a little too much (Team Fortress 2).

cool logo icon thing

Since I didn’t have access to a vector file of this design, I decided to build it from scratch in Adobe Illustrator, designing the middle icon with simple circles, rectangles, and shape builder, while designing the outer fern wreath things by tracing over them with pen tool. I modified the leaves slightly to be more curvy and uniform, and I tried to space them further, in the slightest hope that the plasma cutter could handle them.

After maybe an hour of designing this in the downstairs of the OEDK, my friend Samuel came down from his TA tutorial session, and informed me that the plasma cutter made his cutout stars look like a child drew them. So now I was back to square zero (or maybe square zero point one). After another multiple hours of trying to simplify the leaves by combining them into two big leaves (I couldn’t make them look not atrocious), I gave up and just deleted the leaves, saving an dxf file both with and without the ferns and called it a day.

Then came the actual metal cutting. I brought both the fern and fernless designs to my TA session, and we quickly decided to do the fernless design (rest in peace, fernful design). The plasma cutter didn’t do a horrible job, but i’ll definitely need some great persuasion to ever use it again. The first cutout went alright, with relatively small amounts of dross, but the second cutout, despite using the same settings, had much more dross and thicker middle logo lines. Both cutouts also deformed the middle circle to different degrees. In spite of this, I felt it was fine, that angle-grinding and filing would solve all my problems, and I didn’t need to cut out more diamonds.

big dross

A day later, I came up with a possible way to save the ferns. Create a vinyl mask and paint everything around the ferns. So now I had to come up with a way to color the object. I wanted to include red and blue to represent the corresponding teams in the game, and I came up with the following design schemes (red, blue, and gray are colored, black is cut):

straight vertical line

line aligned with middle logo

Another conundrum: the vertical color separation looked misaligned with the middle logo, while the tilted color separation looks misaligned with the fern. There was no winning. I also wanted to powder coat this, but after some thought, I felt that applying a vinyl mask to be baked at 400°F might not be the best idea, and even after some research (finding out that many people use Oracal 651 vinyl for powder-coat masks, which is what the OEDK has in the form of a huge roll), I decided against it. So, onto the next design: I decided to cut out the middle logo, powder coat the entire object some neutral color (I decided on black), and paint the ferns red and blue respectively, heavily inspired by the cool shirt below.

shirt from resupp.gg

In the end, I created two masks, one for each color:

iteration purgatory

 

On the Saturday before the project was due, the post processing process began…

To start off, I decided to angle-grind the mountain of dross (it wasn’t actually that much) on each piece. It took a somewhat embarassing amount of time to find the angle grinder and where to plug it in outside. Angle grinding not only took off the dross, but it also cleaned up the dark rusty nastiness that the steel was covered in. Unfortunately it also took a couple small chunks out of the metal :(. That’s fine.

angle grind setup

post angle grind; chunks taken out not visible on this side

Next, I brought out two small files (one rectangular, one round) to try to save the shape of the inner circle in each piece. I might’ve spent 30-40 minutes on this alone. Turns out filing steel is as difficult as they say. After I felt I couldn’t really improve the edges (especially since even the small files were a little too big), I moved onto sanding, using 400 grit sandpaper on each face of each piece. This was probably not a useful step since I went to sandblast it afterwards, but it was a step I took nonetheless.

As foreshadowed, I went to sandblast each piece. At first I really couldn’t tell if the sandblaster was working since I couldn’t see the sand, and I figured out the key to sandblasting was to closely observe the metal surface. The roughness of the sandblaster’s viewport was a slight obstacle, where I occasionally had to open it up to inspect the piece manually. The end result was quite nice, a very lightly colored, lightly textured, non-reflective metal piece.

sandblasted pieces

Next I went for powder coating, since I really liked the potential of having a very durable, clean, and professional-ish finish. I picked a satin black color, coated the two pieces, preheated the oven to 400°F for twenty minutes (yes, after coating ;_; I hung the two pieces on a rack and stood in the wet-lab for that long so as to not get locked out or have the need to prop the door open), and then I cured the pieces for another twenty minutes at 400°F. I then cleaned up and put back the powder coat setup and called it a day.

powder coated pieces

The following day, I vinyl cut the four masks for the blue ferns, applying it to each diamond. The design seemed a little too intricate to use transfer paper, so I peeled the vinyl by hand with the help of the vinyl pick.

blue vinyl masks

On each side, I used regular masking tape to cover the edges and the extra stem leaf:

more makeshift masks

I then spray painted both sides, applying two coats within a few minutes of each other, before waiting an hour for the paint to dry.

After which, I peeled the vinyl and tape (super satisfying) and was left with the following:

note: this is the last available photo of this work in its prime. please enjoy its cleanliness

PART 2: HAMARTIA, DOWNFALL, CATASTROPHE, WHATEVER YOU WANT TO CALL IT

IT WAS WHITE. I SPRAYED WHITE SPRAY PAINT ON BOTH OF THEM (the lighting in this photo makes it look not as bad as it is). I turned to the spray can and read it, literally stunned. I swore I read it to be the glossy clear coat, with the clear cap when I took it out 😐 Noo! I thought. Vulgar thoughts! I thought. Without dwelling for more than a few seconds, I rushed to the sink and tried washing it off, which didn’t do anything, I thought about sanding or using some paint remover, but I didn’t want to ruin the blue and red, and it was 7:30 pm and I didn’t want to miss dinner. I spray painted it the actual glossy coat, pretty haphazardly, and left.

.

Even worse, the sides that were spray painted white weren’t even the same across the two pieces, so they weren’t identical anymore either. I tried to cope, thinking maybe it could be cool, like stars on a night sky or whatever, but it couldn’t compete with the clean finish in the photo earlier. The glossy coat wasn’t even that glossy either, likely due to the imperfect surfaces from the previous finish. Recoating, masking, and painting would take hours (the mask and spray painting alone had already taken 6), hours that I didn’t have, nor wanted to commit. My disappointment is immeasurable and my weekend is ruined.