Fairfield firm is key in astronauts' memorialThe Des Moines Register - 1990By CHARLES BULLARD Of the Register’s Iowa City Bureau 1 2 |
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Creative Edge also is cutting thick sheets of crystal-clear acrylic into the shapes of the letters in the astronauts' names. The acrylic letters will be inserted into the black granite template and cemented into place. Grooves will be cut into the letters by Creative Edge to refract the light shining through them from behind, causing them to give off a starlight-like glow. Belilove said the project would not be possible without his company's abrasive waterjet cutting system. "There would be no other way of getting letters cut through the granite panels,” he said. Waterjet technology was developed in the mid-1980s for slicing through difficult-to-cut industrial materials such as titanium and hardened steels. The cutting power of the waterjet comes from combining an abrasive made of crushed garnet and water pressurized to 55,000 pounds per square inch and shot through a microscopic nozzle. According to the Machine and Tool Blue Book, the mixture of water and abrasive comes out of the nozzle at 2 1/2 times the speed of sound, enabling the high-pressure stream to cut through materials up to 10 inches thick. Said Belilove: "A waterjet, in a lot of ways, is the technique of last resort. If you can't cut it in some other fashion, then a waterjet can cut it." |
But beyond its ability to slice through tough materials, the waterjet is computer-controlled so it is not limited to straight lines like a saw. Previously unobtainable architectural and artistic shapes are possible with a waterjet, said Belilove. It took about 24 hours of continuous operation to cut the letters through each of the first two granite slabs "We ran it very slowly to get a premium edge on it," he said. Belilove said there were no hitches and "the cutting went very smoothly." Creative Edge has tackled monumental projects before. It cut glass for the world's largest outdoor glass sculpture at Monsanto's headquarters in St. Louis. It cut granite for a Korean War memorial in Baltimore It cut steel and glass for a soldiers and sailors monument in Indianapolis. It cut glass for United Airlines neon-lighted underground passageway at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. Maynard Evans, right, shows Jim and Ginger Belilove some of the granite letters cat from the 800-lb. granite' panel with names of astronauts who have died in the coarse of the U.S. space program. Jim Belilove, the president of Creative Edge Corp. in Fairfield, says his company will cot in the names on six of the 93 panels that will be installed at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Evans uses a computerized waterjet machine to cut the letters. End |
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