The Great American Road Trip

The Great American Road Trip was a project I completed for ME318, Computer-Aided Design. Growing up with an abiding love for the long road trips that my family would frequently embark upon, I wanted to create an homage to the uniquely American concept of the great cross-country road trip in the form of a maze whose ball would be an analogue for a car traveling across the country. The text is written in font purposefully inspired by the 1950s, when said road trips first became both affordable and possible for the average American family thanks to the advent of the National Highway System.

The maze is machined from 6061 aluminum stock, and features a protective plate of acrylic to prevent the small ball bearing from escaping. The start and end points represent my birthplace of New York City, and my current residence, the Bay Area. After some sanding to eliminate machining marks, the entire maze was sandblasted using glass beads in order to create a matte finish.

This project, though relatively simple CAM-wise, significantly increased my understanding of how to create CNC tool paths, and gave me a great foundation of knowledge in how to run the CNC by myself. Additionally, the design itself was an intensive affair, as designing the maze paths took a lot of time to plan out and transfer to a digital version.