Yesterday I spent 12 hours at TechShop in Menlo Park. I took a CNC Plasma cutter class which isn’t available in San Francisco.  The plasma cutter is fairly easy to use, though it does glitch a bit.  I’ll need to order some of the consumable parts to be able to use it.  I ordered a big piece of mild steel sheet last week and will be picking it up on Monday or Tuesday so I can give it a go.

In non-plasma news, I bent a metal ring using the manual roller.  I came close to lopping a few fingers off in the process, but no such luck. I will use the roller for the doll-chain bombsight support.

With the doll chain, I will TIG weld it closed and attach perpendicular supports to mount it on the wall.  In theory at least…

I also experimented with etching Mild Steel with Muriatic Acid (aka HCl).  Here’s the letter f etched for one hour. I masked it with a vinyl scrap.

It needs a much longer etch or more concentrated acid to make it deeper.  Now that I got it to work without hurting myself, I’ll try again with an image lasered into an enamel coated piece of metal as a resist layer.  It’ll give me an excuse to strip it off using Citrus Strip which smells almost as good as Fast Orange.  Women buy cosmetics by how they smell, and apparently I buy solvents with the same method.

Next up: Wedding Rings

Ok, I’m lying. They’re 4″ diameter and are meant to hold a magnifying glass.  The one on the right is decent.  I think it was beginner’s luck, as subsequent bends all flopped.  In the end, I discovered that the metal is so soft that I can bend it by hand, so I tried shaping it around a magnifying glass to get this:

I used a couple of spirals, like a tight spring, to wedge in the glass.  I think I may go with this version. I like how the pipe holds the glass without glue.  Just need to trim the edges nicely and attach it to a base pipe.

Below I’m experimenting with attachment methods.  You’ll notice some black tape around the copper pipe. I am planning on using it as a mask and sandblasting it for decoration.  The sandblaster was out of commission so I couldn’t try.

Continuing with the theme of “that’s not very interesting”, here are some experiments burning some copper leaf with the laser.  It works, but is verboten because the laser can reflect back up and destroy the machine.  I also tried covering it with a layer of acrylic first (not verboten). The ellipse on the left is the result.  I didn’t do this very long, since I’m not sure what the material underneath is, and there’s a possibility it could release cyanide gas if it’s not acrylic.

Moving along,  here are a couple of versions of the frame for the telescope piece cut in white acrylic.  For curious/forgetful, I have a telescope on one side of the room pointing at a frame on the opposite side.  The text will say “Somewhere a telescope is aimed at Earth”.

But wait, there’s more:

This is the frame for the “Please keep behind the line below” piece.  There is a line on the floor at a distance which makes reading the framed text next to impossible.

Next up is a frame for “Someone is checking out your ass” which will be mounted about 3 feet off the floor:

and last, and least, is a potential frame for a potential piece which will say “This is your least favorite piece”

I made the last two when my brain was fried, so don’t know if I’ll use them.  I’m questioning if some of these frames are a bit too cutesy/gimmicky.  Opinions?