Our project to complete using the CNC Router was a hand held maze. Using Inventor to design the maze and Fusion 360 in order to take our design and make it work with the CNC Router, I was able to create a foam maze.
Starting in Inventor, I tried to brainstorm ideas and design concepts that would make my maze different or better than average. In the end, I decided to incorporate circular areas and wall segments into my design to make it different than the traditional maze. With the size constraints on the maze along with set path thicknesses, it would have been very hard to make a complicated maze to solve, so I ended up with a relatively simple path to the end of the maze.
The next step after Inventor was to put the design into Fusion 360 so we could cut out our design on the router. This program was very new to me, and that combined with the large amount of steps made this part of the project very hard. There were plenty of chances for me to make errors, and this made me have to proceed very cautiously through this portion and rely heavily on the instructions sheet. But after setting up the tool setting and the tool path, the hardest part of the process was done.
Starting in Inventor, I tried to brainstorm ideas and design concepts that would make my maze different or better than average. In the end, I decided to incorporate circular areas and wall segments into my design to make it different than the traditional maze. With the size constraints on the maze along with set path thicknesses, it would have been very hard to make a complicated maze to solve, so I ended up with a relatively simple path to the end of the maze.
The next step after Inventor was to put the design into Fusion 360 so we could cut out our design on the router. This program was very new to me, and that combined with the large amount of steps made this part of the project very hard. There were plenty of chances for me to make errors, and this made me have to proceed very cautiously through this portion and rely heavily on the instructions sheet. But after setting up the tool setting and the tool path, the hardest part of the process was done.
My final product turned out just as expected. The design for the maze worked well, but the maze was very simple, and if I were to go back and redo the project I would definitely find a way to make the maze a lot harder to solve. We had the option to make our maze out of wood, and if I had made a more difficult puzzle I imagine that I would have ran the CNC Router a second time in order to make a wood version of my project. I learned a lot in this new rotation. I was exposed to a brand new software in Fusion 360, and even though I am nowhere near being a capable user, it still gave me some experience and will also help me with my next project that also requires the same software. I thought that the router itself was one of the cooler machines in the innovation center. Although its function may be simple, I feel like it creates some of the better looking projects or items that I've seen come from the innovation center. I will definitely try to incorporate the machine into future projects.