Had a hard time imagining how world maps such as the Dymaxion projection would actually wrap around a sphere, so created this to get a hands-on idea of folding and unfolding the world map. Use as an educational toy, or just as a cool object to play with.
Every piece can be printed flat with no supports, but for better resolution you'd want to print them vertically, which will require supports.
I'd advise against painting the hinge surfaces like I did in the photos. I found it creates a lot of friction and they don't rotate as well. You'll never see the hinge surface when its assembled anyway, so they should be left unpainted.
Uses standard polypanel connectors.
Also tried a version using a relief/topographical map of the globe, but the amount of variation in surface height led to unrelaiable hinges: Some areas (sea floors) are so low that there isn't enough hinge to keep them attached and just fall off; Other areas are so high (mountains) that the hinge won't rotate. If you can think of a solution and want to remix it, I've included the files.
I've included GlobeBools_Complete, which is the complete set of "slicers" that can be used in a boolean operation on any sphere to create your own version using a different globe mesh if you like.
| Core_Inner.stl | 1.9MB | |
| Core_Outer.stl | 2.0MB | |
| GlobeBools_Complete0.stl | 28.1MB | |
| Slice0.stl | 1.9MB | |
| Slice0_Relief.stl | 6.6MB | |
| Slice1.stl | 1.6MB | |
| Slice10.stl | 1.7MB | |
| Slice10_Relief.stl | 6.2MB | |
| Slice11.stl | 1.6MB | |
| Slice11_Relief.stl | 6.4MB | |
| Slice12.stl | 1.1MB | |
| Slice12_Relief.stl | 5.5MB | |
| Slice13.stl | 1.8MB | |
| Slice13_Relief.stl | 6.6MB | |
| Slice14.stl | 1.7MB | |
| Slice14_Relief.stl | 6.4MB | |
| Slice15.stl | 1.6MB | |
| Slice15_Relief.stl | 6.4MB | |
| Slice16B.stl | 492.1KB | |
| Slice16B_Relief.stl | 2.3MB | |
| Slice16T.stl | 1.1MB | |
| Slice16T_Relief.stl | 4.3MB | |
| Slice17.stl | 1.5MB | |
| Slice17_Relief.stl | 6.4MB | |
| Slice18L.stl | 827.4KB | |
| Slice18L_Relief.stl | 2.9MB | |
| Slice18R.stl | 271.6KB | |
| Slice18R_Relief.stl | 2.5MB | |
| Slice19.stl | 801.5KB | |
| Slice19_Relief.stl | 5.6MB | |
| Slice1_Relief.stl | 6.9MB | |
| Slice2.stl | 1.8MB | |
| Slice2_Relief.stl | 6.3MB | |
| Slice3.stl | 944.4KB | |
| Slice3_Relief.stl | 5.5MB | |
| Slice4.stl | 1.0MB | |
| Slice4_Relief.stl | 5.6MB | |
| Slice5.stl | 1.1MB | |
| Slice5_Relief.stl | 5.6MB | |
| Slice6.stl | 1.9MB | |
| Slice6_Relief.stl | 6.6MB | |
| Slice7.stl | 1.5MB | |
| Slice7_Relief.stl | 6.4MB | |
| Slice8.stl | 1.4MB | |
| Slice8_Relief.stl | 6.4MB | |
| Slice9.stl | 806.0KB | |
| Slice9_Relief.stl | 5.8MB |
