Eccentric-Staircase on Aaron BenDaniel's Blog

Senior Week 33

Thu, 22 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This is my last blog post of my high school career, potentially ever. I’d like to think that I’ll continue this website in college, but I suppose only time will tell.

I decided to engrave my name and the shop’s logo onto my eccentric staircase. I think it looks good, and now everyone will know that I made it.

Mr. L was talking with Ben and I, and he mentioned that Autodesk will soon(ish) drop Fusion360’s support for Windows 10. Unfortunately, this means that the shop will be forced to upgrade all of our computers from Win10 to Win11.

This means that we’ll need a new shop image. Ben and I decided to make one and attempt to de-bloat Win11 as best we can.

The big thing that happened this week was the Sophomores’ Sumo Bot Contest. I’m a bit disappointed that the robot that ended up winning didn’t even work as intended, but overall there was a good showing for this year.

The end of my time in the Robotics & Engineering shop meant that I needed to clean out my box. One of the more major things I still had in there was my Micromouse. I’m still disappointed that I didn’t really end up finishing it, but at the same time I don’t regret stopping to work on machine shop projects. I left my maze and the robot I built in the shop so that if someone else ever wants to continue it, they’ll have everything I’ve built available to them.

Senior Week 32

Thu, 15 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I finally made some real progress on the eccentric staircase! Unfortunately, the disks are larger than I would have liked, but it can’t be helped.

I started turning my second attempt in brass, and although brass is easier to machine and the part was smaller, the parting blade was still visibly bending and I felt that it would break sooner or later.

I ended up switching to the carbide insert parting blade. This tool is significantly more rigid and experienced zero bend when I used it. Unfortunately, it is quite a bit shorter than the HSS parting blade and because of this, I needed to bring in the stock and make my eccentric staircase less eccentric. This resulted in larger disks, which I’m not too thrilled with, but I don’t see any other way to make this part, so I guess I’ll need to live with it.

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Even half-finished, I still think it looks pretty cool. I think that even if the part doesn’t come out how I’d initially planned, it’ll still be an overall success.

I also helped clean a little and started taking apart some old sumo-bots. I don’t think any of the juniors or seniors are particularly attached to their sumo-bots, so Mr. Christy tasked me with disassembling them and salvaging the parts.

Senior Week 31

Thu, 08 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This week I started a new project. I want to continue manufacturing projects, and I decided to make a desk ornament/trinket that I’d seen before.

It’s pretty simple to make, at least in theory. The trick is to put the part into the chuck offset from the center of rotation and reclamp the part at different angles to create the spiral of disks.

I’m using a Youtube video as a reference for how to make this part, and their’s came out really good.

I created a drawing and started turning the part on Tuesday.

At first I started with a part that was made out of aluminum and was 1.8 inches in diameter. Unfortunately, I believe that this is simply too large and I ended up breaking a parting blade attempting to turn this part. I very nearly broke another making a second attempt, so I decided to give up on this version.

I decided to redesign the part to be smaller and made out of brass. Brass looks better and is what is used in the video, so maybe it will be easier. The main thing I’m hoping will help is the reduced size. My second version will be both shorter and thinner.