Celebrating 100 days of school with a metal fabrication project

Nick Martin of North Carolina job shop Barnes MetalCrafters helped his daughters celebrate the 100th day of school by using a laser cutter and etcher to make more than 100 necklace medallions for her and her classmates.

When your wife hands you a piece of paper with instructions for a project that is required for your daughters’ 100th day of school, you need to help get it done one way or another. Those of us who work in a metal fabrication shop know that it’s all about getting work done efficiently, correctly, and promptly. So, I was totally up for the task.

Apparently the 100th day of school has become a pretty important event. I’m not sure when this came about because I can’t remember it ever being a thing when I was hitting the books as a young tyke. Apparently, some teachers and kids dress up like they are 100 years old and many participate in games or lessons that involve everything 100. All I know is that my two girls love it and have let me know that it is a big deal.

The task at hand was to display 100 items in a creative way. Before you assume that I am taking the entire workload for this, the assignment wanted the parents to help. It read as follows:

We are asking all parents and students to help us celebrate this exciting day. Please help your child collect 100 items. The items can be pennies, buttons, pencils, shells, cotton balls, paper clips, stickers, macaroni, rocks, popcorn, etc. The items should be displayed in a creative way.

No pressure. I thought about doing something that weighed 100 lbs., but then I remembered that I usually don’t take the kids to school, so someone was going to suffer. Why not do something that I was very familiar with—using metal?

The trick there is that I needed to provide something that wasn’t sharp or dangerous. No ninja stars or anything like that. I threw out the idea of making medallions for necklaces. My daughter and wife were kind of like, “OK, make it happen!” I had several ideas running through my mind and one of them was the red 100 emoji.

We’ve been very busy at Barnes MetalCrafters lately trying to implement new ideas in the office, so finding time to do this was a challenge. Our laser operator told me he needed to leave early the upcoming Friday, which meant I was going to have to finish the day running the laser. That was the perfect opportunity for me to make sure the medallion idea came to life.

At crunch time, the last day of the week, I recorded my thoughts on the computer screen inside Autodesk Inventor. I had to keep the design somewhat simple while incorporating the number 100. I looked up several images for the number 100 emoji and decided to put a couple swooshes under the number to give it some more character. It still looked kind of plain Jane, so I added the letters for my daughter’s elementary school. I chose a college font and decided I’d etch that on to the circular medallion.

I found a drop of 16-ga. stainless steel with a No. 3 finish. It was thick enough to not have a sharp edge and substantial enough for a necklace. I managed to fit 149 medallions on the drop. I figured I might as well fill the whole drop and have enough leftovers to give my other daughter, Reese, to take for her class.

We had recently put a new head on our laser, so the etching parameters were not the best for that gauge of material. After about four parts, I had the etch looking pretty good. Time to let the laser fly. I was able to walk away for the most part. A couple tip touches led me back to the machine, but in due time the nest was finished.

I was pretty happy with the results. We closed at noon on Friday, so most of the guys were ready to leave. I do not run our Costa sander very often, so Nick Truheart got the machine set up for my material and thickness. Another employee, Vitaliano, aka V, stayed late, so I could reach out to him if I had any issues.

I’m glad V stayed late because we had to make some adjustments to the settings on the sander. After several passes in the machine, we ended up putting an orbital brush finish on the back side to help eliminate any burrs.

To be sure all the sharp edges and imperfections were dealt with appropriately for young hands, I took a soft pad home with me to polish them out. And since the majority of parts on a fiber laser have to be tabbed in to avoid collisions, I knew there was going to be a tiny spot on the lead-in/lead-out that needed to be cleaned.

When I got home that day, I had a “proud dad” moment. I went to my daughter, Lillian, and told her that I made it happen. She ran out to the Bronco with me and held the box of medallions so proudly in her hands. Next, we had to clean them up and get some type of necklace lanyard ready for them.

Lillian was onboard to do anything to help. I gave her the task of removing the tabs off of the medallions. I didn’t want her using any power tools, so I gave her a file to use. I showed her how to do a couple of them and she was off to the races. Reese wanted to help too, so I got another file and let her go to town.

While they were doing that, I had the soft pad on a variable speed drum sander clamped to my workbench. I gave all of the medallions a quick pass and polished them out. They looked pretty good. My helpers got tired of filing off the tabs, so I took that task on as well.

My wife created the necklace lanyards using their school colors. In the design process, I actually thought ahead and made a wide opening on the medallion. That way we could tie all the lanyards together beforehand and loop them through. My daughters caught on pretty quickly after watching a few being put together. When it was time for a break from filing, they were happy to jump in and help with the looping process.

The 100th day of school was going to be special for both of my girls, especially Lillian, who would have enough necklaces to hand out to the entire first grade. I couldn’t wait to hear how her day went. She was excited, and said her whole class crowded around her and she could barely sit down at her desk. Reese had enough for her class, and her teacher sent us a class picture showing plenty of smiles! I was glad to hear about their day and happy that I could contribute to the 100th day of school.