1. 1/8" Aluminum Sheet

1. Waterjet

2. Tig-Welder

3. Metal Files

4. Fess Tool

5. Buffing Wheel

6. Deburring Tool

7. OnShape

The water jet is the main "shop" tool used during this project. We used the water jet to cut out all of the plates that I had designed, as well as put the designs onto the plates. We learned how to put our files into the water jet program, and learned what modifications were necessary, as well as learning how to operate the water jet. 

Welding was a major part of this project as well. Learning how to weld our cube together was an important part of this project for us. Welding was by far the most enjoyable, yet probably the most difficult part of this project. 

After we cut out plates out of the 1/8" aluminum on the water jet, they needed to be sanded down. Obviously, we could do this manually, but we took this opportunity to learn how to setup and us the Fess tools in the shop. The Fess tools were used to sand down all of our pieces prior to buffing them with the buffing wheel. 

After we sanded down our plates with the Fess tool, we wanted to put a mirror finish on them. To do this, we used a buffing wheel to put a nice finish on. We learned how to load up the wheel with diamond, and then use it to put a finish on our cube plates. 

These are the 6 basic plates for our cube. These 6 sides will be put together and then welded together to create a cube. Their overall outside shape and the internal designs were all manufactured on the water jet. They are constructed out of 1/8" aluminum. 

This is the final cube product, made out of the cube plates shown above. The finger joints were matched and put togther, and then welded. This is the final product for this project. 

At Punahou's KRLL shop, there is only 1 water jet. My engineering class has ~20 students that need to cut their plates out of aluminum on this water jet, which creates a pretty big bottleneck. With so many students needing to go through this machine, there can often be a long wait time to get your plates cut, with only 2-3 students getting their plates cut every class. Luckily, I was able to be one of the first students to go through the water jet (I finished my design the earliest), and was thus able to avoid such a wait. 

The buffing wheel was a challenging tool to use. Applying the right amount of diamond was a tricky task. Too little, and it doesn't come out as reflective as I would hope. Too much and I am just wasting the diamond. Finding the balance between the two is a challenge itself. And then it comes to actually using the buffing wheel on your part. If you don't apply enough pressure, there is not enough of a finish, but if you apply too much pressure, the wheel slows down or jumps off the table. Thus, you must find the balance of pressure. Having to balance these 2 factors made using the buffing wheel a challenge. 

Obviously, welding is a pretty big safety risk - an electrical arc reaching thousands of degrees in temperature isn't something that should be used without proper training. However, there was only one piece of welding equipment for our class of 20-or-so people. This means that we all had to be trained, and execute our welding sequentially, slowly passing through the single welding room. Because of this, many of us only received our training for welding during the first semester, and were not able to complete our cube.