For this project, I had the thought to try to cut out the American flag. I would cut out the stars and the paint on the remaining colors.
First, I cut out the diamond with many small stars in the top left corner. This did not work out very well. The plasma cutter was nowhere near precise enough to handle such small shapes and they ended up looking like if a 5-year-old had tried to draw a star. I decided to instead, cutout one large star in the corner. The plasma cutter still was not a fan of the sharp corners but it ended up looking rounded and cartoon looking which I was okay with.
After the plasma cutter, I used the angle grinder to clean off the metal and then used the sand blaster to make the metal incredibly smooth.
This is where the problems started. I first applied a coat of white spray paint. This layer ended up being very blotchy so I decided to remove the paint, and sand blast the pieces again. This next attempt, the white paint was fine. I think what happened overall in the painting process was cardboard and dusts from the drying areas got onto the paint and created small bumps on the surface. After the white cost, I used a 3d printed stencil to paint on red stripes. I tried using tape for a bit, but there wasn’t thin enough tape that I could find and I felt that this would be more even and easier.
For one of the diamonds, the stencil worked great, for the other, I believe the stencil wasn’t fully against the metal and then the lines weren’t as straight and defined. Finally, I taped off the bottom and right sides and painted a blue layer on.
I think the overall lesson would be to make several of the object next time. One of the diamonds turned out pretty well and the other felt less well done (even thought they were made concurrently). Also, I cleaned up my workspace(s).
Cost analysis:
Labor: $10/hour for 8 hours = $80
Steel sheet: $15.93 (Home depot)
Spray paint: Used maybe 1/10 of a can total = $5.80 (Home depot)
Tools (plasma cutter, sandblaster, angle grinder): $0 (since these are really things you can rent reasonably, we aren’t putting a price on them).
Total: $101.73 (Once again, very dependent on labor costs and the cost of tools)
