This week I decided to do Waterjet cutting and welding for the wildcard week.

I wanted to make an ambient speaker folded from thin metal sheets which were cut on the waterjet cutter.

I initially prototyped the shape on blender, taking a low- poly approach to the shape. I drew inspiration from several sources including film and other similar designs which I’ve seen.

From previous folding experiences working with cardboard and paper, I knew that irregular shapes can offer significant problems if the angles and sizes aren’t made at a maximum possible accuracy. Therefore, some prototyping and careful consideration for the geometry was in order. I tried to design the shape as optimally as possible so that the end product would be made out of triangles and not polygons. This ensures that when the steel is water jetted and then folded, the resulting shape would allow align.

I went through some design prototypes and iterated in cardboard which I Lazer cut. This would then assist me in bending the shapes, as a 1:1 guide.

Waterjetting was a new process to me but Shah helped a lot. The machine works similar to the PCB milling machine or a CNC but on a larger scale. It calibrates and shoots a water stream filled with sand at a high speed through a nozzle onto the steel held down with weights in a water bed. The steel pieces are taken out after each part is done cutting. This is done to prevent the loose pieces interfering with the placement of the main sheet

After the water jetting was done, I moved onto bending and folding. I had chosen the thinnest metal which I could find, 22 gauge or 0.8mm in mild steel. I knew from looking at other people’s experiments that it was going to be more challenging to bend these pieces than I thought.

The metal bender helped in starting me up but I found that 1. The metal can only bend up till 90 degrees and 2. That using the clamp and vice to hold it in place and bending it myself was sometimes easier. The unorthodox shape also made things more challenging. Fitting the specific piece in the machine to get it to bend was challenging and I sometimes had to resort to the vice or just pliers in some cases.

After bending the shapes a few times, I could already tell it wasn’t going to line up perfectly.

I opted to move to N51 for the welding and Chris showed me the ropes. My spot welding was honestly really bad and it definitely made things more difficult in some cases.

Chris helped me to tweak the strength (15 or 16) of the welding as well as the speed (88) of the spool coming out to be at an optimal. Through trial and error, I found more of a groove the second day when I came back. I decided that aligning the 2 sides would be close to impossible with this geometry. A possible solution would be to make a slightly smaller model that that of the metal to act as a sort of mould. Or perhaps easier might be to 3d print the model directly from the 3d file and then use that as a mould.

I proceeded to grind some of the more difficult geometry and hammer the rest of the troublemaking pieces to be flat. The Steel was more like a jacket folded over than buttoned up eventually. Although it could generate interesting sounds when the music eventually gets played through it.

The resulting model was a bit corpse- like but I could still clean up the welds to make the geometry smoother. The middle part was slightly bent to the side and I had to somehow bend it to the opposite side. I grinded it open and rewelded after adjusting the folds of the shape. The resulting object worked to amplify sound but not necessarily as initially intended.

Another problem which I faced was that I accidently kept the nice side of the steel on the inside, as opposed to the outside. Jen put it nicely, she said that some of the issues you encounter whilst trying to make things you only discover along the way, and the only way in which you avoid these mistakes Is by making them and fixing it.