Lil spider maze

A small physical puzzle made for a Stanford CNC class. A metal base carries CNC-milled channels in a spider-web pattern; a laser-cut clear acrylic top sheet sits over it as a window; a steel ball navigates the maze beneath the cover.

The transparent top was the design choice: it lets you see through to the path you've taken, which makes the object feel less like a maze and more like a tiny instrument.

The web pattern was generated to maximize dead ends without crossing the line into frustrating. The channel geometry, depth, width, and corner radius, was tuned to trap the ball gently rather than catastrophically: deep enough to keep it on the path, shallow enough to let it slide.

The build was a study in two pipelines at once. The metal base needed careful CNC strategy: end mill selection, feed rate, and step-down tuned to keep the channel walls clean and the floor flat enough that the ball rolls predictably. The acrylic top was laser-cut for a clean perimeter and a flush fit against the base. Two processes, one finished object.