Designing the Maze
Designing this maze was challenging and I went through many designs before I found one that I liked. I First designed a maze with many sections inside of a circle, That design made everything too tight and didn't look good and so I started to design something new. I then made a square with 4 sections as my maze, this design looked much better and wasn't as tight while I was trying to design. After I finished my design I headed into fusion to start working in that program.
Working With Fusion
After I finished designing in inventor I sent my file over to fusion a new program and started working on it there. I first set up the base settings of my maze and than set up the more advanced settings like setting up tool paths and roughing step downs. At first my settings were not cutting out the whole maze and I had no Idea why, but I eventually figured out that I had set up my maze wrong. After I fixed that and re-did my settings my tool paths were correct and my maze was ready to be cut out on the router.
Using the router:
After I finished setting up my fusion file I downloaded it onto a hard drive and headed down to the router to prepare to cut it out in foam. I first had to find the center of the foam piece I was using so I would know where to put the tip of the drill before I started it. After that I set up the settings in the router program and I started the cut. It took around five minutes total to finish my maze and to cut the outsides a bit as well.
Cutting out my name
After I finished using the router I needed to engrave my name into my maze. I first made an illustrator file and put my name in, then I made sure the lines were blue so the foam wouldn't melt or burn. Finally I double checked my measurements and I went down to the laser to start engraving. I uploaded my file to the laser program double checked my settings and started to engrave. After it was done it looked perfect! it was a success!
What Did I learn
In this rotation I learned how to use fusion with the router and learned fusion too which was really cool. I learned how to be more efficient while using the router and while using the fusion program. I also learned how to become better and more efficient while using inventor and while using other similar programs. I learned a lot during this rotation and am happy with what I accomplished and learned.