The Maze - Design to Finished Product
For this project, we were tasked to build and maze out of foam utilizing the CNC Router. Originally, I thought this would be a very easy task and I began to dimension out my 8x8 inch square. Shortly after doing this, I realized this would be a little more of a tedious project than I thought. Shortly after doing this, I extruded the sketch up to 3/4 in thick. After I extruded the sketch, I began drawing my maze. We were required to leave a 5/8 in border along the outside of the maze itself so I first made sure to set my boundaries accordingly. Once this was done, I began to draw lines and make them all 3/8 in wide. After I was satisfied with what I had drawn up, I uploaded the file to a software program called Fusion 360. Once it was uploaded, I changed the speed, feedrate, and and made sure the tool path I designed worked. After I made sure everything was working correctly and everything was set up right, I took it down to the CNC router and cut it out. After that, I took it to the laser engraver and engraved my name on it to prevent someone else from taking credit for it.
Inventor
Fusion 360
CNC Router
What I learned
I learned through the process of trial and error that there are lots of things that can go wrong while drawing something up in Inventor and then transferring it to Fusion 360. However, the ability for the machines to make accurate cuts down to the thousandths is incredible. I really enjoyed using this machine in particular and I feel like it is a tool that I will be using down the line in the near future. I am very impressed with the results I received from the program and the machine. If I could take one thing away from this unit, it would be that anyone can use these kinds of machines as long as they apply themselves and want to learn.