If you saw the previous post on the laser cutting assignment.  I was out with a fever for the most part this past week. If not, now you know.   :[]

I signed up for a tutorial for waterjet cutting on Wednesday right before I got sick (excellent foresight), because the UI of the machine seemed difficult.

After spending an unreal amount of time trying to figure out why the software does not recognize the center rectangle, it turned out that in the .ai file, the outer shape and the inner shape had different colored outlines, and that freaked out the cutting software. Once that’s resolved, cutting went pretty smoothly. Yes the design is a bit lame, but I didn’t want to make a design that might not result in a clean cut, and having no idea how long cutting will take, I went with a more conservative design.

Post processing was something else.

I was out sick until Sunday, in which I just had to get this thing finished both because it’s due and because in my fever dreams this stupidly simple shape kept showing up reminding me that it’s due… Maybe that’s the future, where due dates are reminded through dreams so students can’t sleep well if they are sleeping on an unfinished assignment.

Anyways. Bright and early I started filing this aluminum diamond. Bright and early did I give up on doing that because that’s extremely inefficient.

Dremel time. Sure this is not the best way to do it and really ate up the bit, but the speed this thing can get an edge smoothed should be studied, and metal smoothing bits should be labeled better (like the bits themselves). Obviously, safety glasses and face masks because flakes were flying everywhere on the loading dock. I tried to do the middle with it, but didn’t like the look of it after a few run so I stopped, hence the inconsistency between the two diamonds.

Sandblast was smooth, nothing much to say about that aside from it being fairly straightforward.

Orbital sanding afterwards because there were still some imperfections after sand blasting.

All the clear coats were either used up or taken, the powder coat machine broke, so metal is getting metallic. No reasoning behind the color choice aside from it being the fullest can out of the 5 I shook.

No photos of the last working table because almost nothing was done on a table. I put away everything as I should, and the wind put all the metal shavings back onto my mask and everything I wore, lovely as always.

Cost breakdown:

Adobe software: Free with a basic .XML file (hire better coders please, or don’t and keep it easy for everyone)

Waterjet cutter : borrowed, hard to price down to unit price per diamond.

Aluminum sheet: $60 for a 2’x4′ sheet at Home Depot should be reported as money laundering because aluminum has not been expensive since the late 1880’s, and has been the 3rd most common element Earth’s crust since forever. A single diamond would run about $1 if I am wasting some spaces for testing.

The poor Dremel bit that I’m pretty sure I killed is about $3

The sand paper on the orbital that I barely used goes for about $0.75 a sheet

The can of metallic paint,  $7 for a full can.

A diamond in the end costs about $5 to make.