Justin makes a steel ornament | ENGI 210: Prototyping and Fabrication

Introduction

For this project, I decided to make a pretty pattern in the shape of a Diamond. About halfway through the process, I realized it looked like and could function as a Christmas ornament, so I’m just going to pretend that was the plan all along.

Design

I CADed my ornament from scratch to be the rough size of the diamonds that were provided. The CAD software used was SolidWorks, and I used a series of splines to achieve the graceful curves.

SolidWorks Model

Water Jetting

Because I have a lot of experience using the water jet, I decided to cut a more complex shape. Water jetting went smoothly, but I was a little too demanding on the water jet. You can see small holes where the water jet began its path on the inside cutouts. I decided to leave them, as the best way to remove them would be to redesign the part to remove small inside cutouts, which was not something I was willing to do.

The path cutting out my ornament!

Sand Blasting

After water jetting, I sand blasted the ornaments. I did this to remove rust and other imperfections that were on the surface of the steel.

Filing

Following sand blasting, I filed the outside corners of the ornaments to make the corners not as sharp. I decided to leave the inside corners unfiled for a variety of reasons. It would have been impossible to fit a file in the small cutouts, so some of the corners would have always remained unfiled. I also left them unfiled so the edges would look more crisp and deemed it acceptable since people would be less likely to handle or brush against the inside edges.

Spray Painting

I originally planned to powder coat the ornaments (which would have worked better due to all the interior cutouts), but I had to settle for spray painting since the air compressors for the powder coat broke. Spray painting went smoothly, and I made sure to apply spray as lightly as I could, which was very difficult due to the large number of interior edges to coat.