This was my first time using a plasma cutter and working on metals, but I did the intermediate level of cutting out and post-processing two identical diamonds so I could spray paint my piece. I decided to cut out a shape of Taiwan in the middle of the diamonds. I first traced out the shape in Adobe Illustrator with the pen tool.
The metal I used was steel. From the bucket next to the plasma machine, I found the metal sample of the same material and thickness at different cutting speeds, and the cut of 190 speed looks the cleanest. Then, I followed the instructions and operated the plasma cutter. However, many problems occurred. First, for some unknown reason, when I imported the dxf. file from AI to Torchmate, the scale was completely off resulting in my metal piece being 6 feet tall!? (I swear I did not enlarge it at any point) So, I had to re-export the file from Adobe and import it into Torchmate. Magically the dimensions worked fine this time.
<– my 200 inches wide diamond
My initial plan was to cut 4 diamonds in one go. However, the second thing went wrong. To start the plasma cut, I should just turn the “Cut On” light on and select Start. But I also turned the plasma on in Aux. This caused the plasma to cut a straight line through my diamond where I did not want a cut (like the image below). And because of the line, the machine stopped itself before cutting the last piece, resulting in only one desired piece and two pieces that got cut through. So, I repeated the process by importing 2 copies of the diamond and made sure the settings were correct this time.
After cutting the metal, I used the magnetic grinding block to clamp down my steel metal and grind away the dross on the edges. Then, I used a file to smoothen the internal edges. After that, I used the sandblaster to clean the surface, so I could spray paint the metal green.
Before and after grinding ↓
After filing, sandblasting, and spray painting ↓
The spray paint looked nice until I flipped it over when it wasn’t completely dried. Therefore, I waited for around 7 hours to come back and spray print over it, but it resulted in a bumpy surface. If I had more time, I would sandblast the initial paint layer off before spray painting a second layer.
Cost estimation:
- 1×2 ft. steel (.075″ thick): $19.08
- (material cost according to MetalsDepot)
- Labor cost: $15/hr *5hr = $75
- Total cost: $94.08
My clean workspace:
