Making a Maze... Using Inventor and Fusion 360
Using Inventor has always been a struggle for me, but with this project I made it a lot harder on myself. I made a triangular maze, thus making the entire process much more difficult. Inventor doesn't like measurements and dimensions. I had to restart my project several times before finally completing it and being able to put it into Fusion. Once it was in Fusion, the entire process was fairly straightforward. I like Fusion. I learned how to make my projects more efficient, and I learned the values of patience and perseverance (this seems funny but I'm serious). The triangular maze was difficult but all of the hard work really paid off and it looks really cool.
The first step to making my maze was to physically sketch it out and make it in Inventor. This was the hardest step in the project for me because I had to start over several times and a triangular shaped maze has a lot of logistics to it that I didn't quite understand. Once I got it done though, the process was smooth sailing from there. After finishing the model in Inventor, I had to upload it into Fusion. I don't have a great screenshot of that because it was my first time using Fusion and I didn't fully understand the software until I did my brake bracket assignment. After plotting out the tool paths, all I had to do was bring it down to the router and route out my maze.
I brought my flash drive with the G code down to the router (after waiting in a lengthy line of people to use the router) and routed out my maze. It went great, until the end, when it was routing out the sides. It cut a little too low and cut into the wood. It was really loud and pretty annoying, but it ended up being okay. The router didn't want to work with me the first couple of times I tried, but my file was just messed up. No big deal after that.
Last, I laser engraved my name into the foam. I had to do it twice because the first time it was tiny and unreadable. The second time wasn't much better but it was good enough. The laser layout was pretty easy to do. It was just some text in Illustrator with the blue outline. I then synced it up with the laser and we were good to go. My final maze turned out really good and I'm very proud of it.