From Raw Steel to a Work of Art – Why I Built my Plasma CNC

[music]
Yeah, sorry Eddie. I had to cover you up for this one. That’s Uncle Eddie underneath that. [cheering]
All right. Today we’re cutting out a seahorse for a fundraiser. And I got my magnet here in case I got to lift anything up.
[music lyrics of song playing while plasma cutter cuts out seahorse]
that cheese probably lying when you say it’s so tasty
[music lyrics] and I’ll be till I die if you bring me to your boy you
Take a look until my eyes go. I don’t rock with any kind of cheese. [music lyrics] I need you on the street. I ain’t trying to breast.
[music]
Oh boy. Oh no. Got to catch it. (piece popped up)
Got it.
Oh no. Why isn’t it cutting now? [music playing while torch is no longer cutting]
Oh, come on.
Come on. Why not?
[music]
Why did it stop cutting? All right. So, you can see what I’ve completed. So, what I did was I went into Fusion 360 and I filled in all the spots in the model that were completed. And now it’s going to restart. Hopefully the amount of playing I did by jogging the axes and all that, everything is fine. I would expect it to be. I was careful when I changed the uh electrode. So now you got to load the file. [music]
[music lyrics while seahorse is being cut out]
[music while seahorse is cutout]
[music while seahorse is cutout]
[music while seahorse is cutout]
[music while seahorse is cutout]
Yeah, look at that, buddy. That is sweet. Okay, now I’m running the check size just to make sure it fits in the thing. I certain it will, but just got to be sure.
Okay, so I got the cut out there. This will go quick. [clears throat] See exactly how long.
That hole right there is actually the center of gravity by calculated by uh Fusion 360. Pretty cool.
Pretty wild.
[music]
Heat. Heat.[music while back is being cut out]
[music while back is being cut out]
[music while back is being cut out]
[music while back is being cut out]
[music while back is being cut out]
Oh yeah. So that’s going to look good. at silver and the steel, plain steel over top of the gray mill scale steel offset by 3/4 of an inch. I think that’s going to pop. All right, we are I already went through and did some of this a little bit. I’ll show you what I did. See here? So, this is the seahorse I’m working on, and I grinded that a little bit. I’m going to continue this process. I don’t want it to look perfect. So, I’m not trying to grind off all the mill scale. I’m going to coat it with flood. It’s going to be for a fundraiser. You know, it’s perfectly imperfect. So, [music]
[music while back is being cut out]
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got a better.
[music] Yeah, look at that. Yeah, buddy.
So, you can see the detail on that. I left some of the mill scale there intentionally. I wanted the uh burnishing marks in there from the grinder.
So, I use my angle grinder to grind parts of it away.
So, it’s not perfect. You can see we’ve got some mill scale like right here. The mill scale is there. So, and that’s intentional. Like I said, perfectly imperfect. And then I ground down the backside a little bit just to remove some of the slag. Like I didn’t get it all cuz I ran out of battery. But and I got mic powder 63 different colors. And I’m just uh throwing them in there and mixing it around with the uh the penetrol coat. Okay. Okay. So, I just got an acid brush that I’m using and I put this in a um a plastic container. And now I’m going to mix in some um different color here.
Oops. A little bit too much there maybe.
So, I already coated the bottom. I didn’t bother recording that because that’s boring. And I didn’t want to start recording until I started playing with this to see how it would work out. I think I still got to mix this stuff up some.
What’s up?
[laughter]
Holy smack.
Look at that. Don’t paint over that. No, leave that there. Like that. Boom. Stuff looks I know, but it’s I have to coat it. Why? I know. Because it’s it’ll fall off.
And what do you mean? It’ll become airborne. I don’t know if this stuff is good for you.
I’m confused. You can’t leave that green look like that. No. What are you coating it with? Penetrol. It’s right there. Oh, and that’s what it does to all of the Okay. Yeah, it’s came in handy. Okay. I’m glad Zins are good for something.
Why is it turning gold? Because I mixed in gold. Are you going to do a different color now? Yeah, I did. I did blue. Yeah, but what are you going to do up top? Um, I got some gold mixed in there. No, now it should be a different color. You have blue, green. It’s kind of morphing, honey. But now it didn’t need to be. It can’t all be the same color up there.
You have to switch colors, right? Yeah. This is fun. I want to paint.
Do a different color. Do a different color now. I don’t understand. Like, what do you mean? You mixed it with gold. Now make it purple.
Okay. Give me another brush. It’s a third drawer on the left in the red cabinet.
Oh god. I got to get the stuff out of the dryer.
That’s green. I said purple. Oh, you want purple? People, he doesn’t listen. Yes, because that is green. What you just did? Well, flame purple in that box. And don’t get in the way of the camera. Are you listening to what I Okay, can you please focus people? He doesn’t. [laughter] Okay, stop [clears throat] painting and look at me. Okay, you have all of that green now. Okay, now switch colors. Yeah. So, give me some purple and another purple.
Purple rose. Yeah, but which do you like? This one or this one? Well, I picked this one, but I might like that one better. Yes, that was purple.
Oops.
So that might be what it looks like when it’s done. That purple. And you have to wash your hands after touching it. I don’t like that purple. That looks pink. No, that’s not purple. That’s a red red pink. Okay. I just wanted to show you that’s what it will look like when it cures. Oh, it’ll be fuzzy bumpy. It might be. Yeah. I like it not fuzzy bumpy. [laughter] I’m just saying. Don’t let me stay out here. I got to get the stuff out of the dryer. We got to vacuum the windows. Oh my. We need to vacuum the windows.
Oh, yes. See what a good idea I had. But it’s weird. It’s looking blue. It’ll be great. Hi, Johnny. Look what Dad did. How cool was that? How was work, Johnny? Uh, it was good. Isn’t that cool, though? He’s just like, “Yeah, [laughter] it’s paint.” No, it’s not paint. Whatever. He made that. Yeah. And the thing over there. He cuts it. I know, but it’s so neat. He’s coloring. Oh, can you make a mermaid? Of course. But I don’t know where to put it. I got to go get the clothes on the dryer. John, that’s amazing. Thanks, honey. Hi, John. You should come out and take a picture. I don’t have my phone. She should go get your phone then come out and take a picture. I’m doing clothes, honey. I had to get the clothes. She’s funny.
It’s so weird. The color looks purple when it’s in powder form, but as soon as it mixes up with the flood, it changed to like a bluish color. Pretty wild. So, that’s the back. And now we got to do the other side of the um the piece that goes over top of this. All right. So now we got to pack this up. It served this purpose today. And we got to make room for the other one. It’ll go in here. Okay. So then we need some painting towers.
So we can coat the bottom with that tail. Let me get another set of gloves. All right. So now we’re coating the back side of the piece that’ll get mounted on top of that.
So, we’re doing that now with that paper towel and flood. So, now I can use this paper towel still. So, we got a lot of coating to do. I might actually end up using the brush to make sure I get every every Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. So, I’ll use this just to get the backside, but this might not even be good. Yep. I think I got to use the the brush.
Yep. Got to use the brush. So that no worky.
So I started there. I just got to remember where I went. Do all of the inside pieces here cuz if I don’t get the edges here, they’ll the insides will rust.
It’s a lot of lot of going inside the lines I got to do here.
So now since I already did all the insides and everything, now we just got to coat the top. And I guess I could get a little tricky and just use some of this stuff a little bit. Let’s see. I need a need a method to this. Make sure I get everything. And I got to get some screws and I got to coat them so I can’t forget to do that. And stand off. Okay. So, we’ll go right to there and we’ll come around here. Okay. So, we did all the outside here. Just a little bit of that. Let’s just make sure we come all the way up. Okay, I think we’re good. Now, I need to get uh some screws and standoffs. Five. One, two, three, four, five, seven, eight. One, two, three, four, five. Let’s do six.
One, two, three.
Here we go. We are done coating now. It’s just time. We just have to wait. All right. So, this is what we coated it with. Flood. I think I’m like It feels like it’s halfway, but yeah, it’s uh I think it’s looking pretty cool. And then that’ll sit on top of that. It’ll be bitching. I’ll just sit this on the floor. And then this needs to sit on the floor undisturbed. All right. So, front and back is coated of the front piece. And then front and back is coated of the back piece. And the back piece has some funky mica powder that I mixed in with it. And it should settle out and do its thing. And you can see there’s some little weird streaks going on there. It’s very interesting what’s happening. But there’s gravity and it’s going that way because this tabletop is not level. So that might add to some cool effects. But anyway, it’s the background of that piece. So you’ll see an outline of whatever the colors are and then the silver in the foreground. So yeah, that is that is it.
All right, we’re beginning assembly of this. Still a little tacky, I think. Well, maybe not. It might be tacky in some spots, but I’ll try to handle it carefully. I have to raise it up like so and get these guys started in here.
Uh oh.
Oh boy. Teetering. It’s a teetering.
Begin assembly.
It looks good on the back side. So now I’ll position this just like so. Oopsie.
Okay. So it wasn’t lining up, but all you had to do is just bend this up. And this is going to kind of keep it in conformity, I think.
There you go. Yeah, that’s pretty cool. That is cool.
Now, to get a good picture, I really got to hang it.
I don’t know if I can rest it against it like this or not.
There we go. That’s the piece right there. Stands 46 in tall. That is so cool. [snorts] I was really concerned about how how it was going to look, but now that I’m seeing it like this, it is awesome. So, yeah, I think they’re going to like it. Yeah, look at that thing. That’s a beast. That is so cool. Yeah, whoever gets that is going to be really happy with it. I am confident of that. So, if you’re interested in having a custom piece made for you like that, [snorts] that measures 46 46 in tall, but I can do uh 4×8 minus an inch. I mean 4×4 right now. I have the capacity to do 4×8. Um, but I could do 4×4 easily right now. And when I say that, subtract an inch from both directions. So, 46 x 46 for safety reasons. So yeah, if you want a if you want a piece, make sure you contact me. Real you do it or you do it metal fab on Instagram. Yeah, it’s pretty cool. I got to hang it up with a hook. Good thing I got this uh wall control board because it accepts pegboard hooks. Look at how cool that is. Sorry, Eddie. I had to cover you up for this one. [laughter] That’s Uncle Eddie underneath of that. But yeah, it’s uh that’s pretty wild. I’m happy with how it came out. Yeah, good deal.
[cheering]
[Music lyrics at end of credits] Hey. Yeah. No cheese. You know when I rocking with