USA (lower 48) topographic relief puzzle

thingiverse

Update 2022-04-13: Alaska is now also available here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5346700 Update 2022-03-14: Hawaii is now also available here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5317621 This is a 47 tile topographic puzzle of the lower 48 US states. The scale is 1:5'000'000 with a vertical exaggeration of 10. Rhode Island and Delaware unfortunately didn't get their own tile due to their small size. RI is mostly merged with CT (eastern most part fused to MA). Delaware was fused to Maryland (together with Washington DC and the southern tip of the Delmarva peninsula which belongs to VA). Michigan on the other hand has two tiles, one on each side of Lake Michigan. In order to print at 100% you will need a 25cmx25cm build plate size. If your plate is smaller (or significantly larger), check with TX and CA what scale you want to print and apply the same xy and z scaling and optionally z offset to all other states. Note that the order of applying z scaling and z offset does matter. Possible grouping for 4 color print without borders of same color touching (many others are possible): Color1: CA, CT, GA, KY, MI, MS, MT, NE, NH, PA, TX, UT Color2: AL, AR, IL, KS, ME, MN, NM, NV, NY, OH, SC, VA, WA, WY Color3: CO,FL,IN, LA, MA, MD, MO, NC, OR, SD, WI Color4: AZ, IA, ID, ND, NJ. OK, TN, VT, WV Elevation data was taken from SRTM 4.1 (https://www.un-spider.org/links-and-resources/data-sources/digital-elevation-model-srtm-41-cgiar-csi) The state borders were provided by the US Census Bureau (https://www.census.gov/geographies/mapping-files/time-series/geo/cartographic-boundary.html) The picture shows my 4 color print at 40% scale (xy). I used 80% z scale to add another factor of 2 of vertical exaggeration (20x total) and shifted down by 1mm. With these settings the only state that did not show any elevation pattern is Florida. 0.175 mm layer height, 0.4 mm nozzle, PLA. For maximum detail: \- print as large as you can \- use the lowest layer thickness where your printer prints reliably \- use small nozzle diameter for additional detail in xy I realize that all of these points mean a significantly increased print time, therefore some trial and error may be required to find the best compromise between quality and speed (as always).