Custom Topographic Resin Ornaments
Introduction: Custom Topographic Resin Ornaments
This Instructable will walk through the process for designing and making custom topographic ornaments! Specifically, I will show you how to make an ornament using topographic data of your choosing in your preferred shape. The following is the simplest method that I found for doing this using free resources. The basic outline of this tutorial will involve:
* Creating the geographic outline in Inkscape
* Downloading stl elevation data online
* Using TinkerCAD to cut the topographic data into the shape we want
* 3D printing the models
* Painting them
* And creating the final ornament with resin
Supplies
The free software involved includes:
* Inkscape
* Touch Terrain
* Tinkercad
* Cura
The tools I used to make the ornament include:
* Just a 3D printer
The supplies I used in the project include:
* 3D Printer filament
* sandpaper
* Paint (spray paint, textured paint, and white paint)
* Resin
* Resin dye
* silicone resin mold
* silicone and paint brush
Step 1: Making the Outline (Using Inkscape)
The first step in the project is creating the outline of the shape that we want the ornament to look like. To do this, you will need a vector graphics software (that can output an SVG file). There are a number of programs available to do this (Adobe Illustrator being the obvious one), but I will show how to do this using Inkscape, which is free. The basic process involves:
1. I simply start by taking a screenshot of a map of the area I want to make the ornament of, then paste this in Inkscape. [Pic 1]
2. Now in Inkscape I use the circle tool to create what will be the border for all of my ornament, except for the coastline. In the bottom of Inkscape, use the x to remove any fill, then shift+red to give the circle a red outline. Resize this outline to encompass the area you want. [Pic 2]
3. For the coastline, I use the Bezier tool, specifically what Inkscape calls the B-Spline path. With the snap to paths enabled, I create the first point directly on the circle, then start tracing along the coastline; the basic process is creating as many points as needed along the coastline to get the general shape. In my example, I do this with the Washington Coast, and Vancouver Island. [Pics 3 and 4]
4. Once the lines are traced I duplicate each line with Ctr+D, then with both the circle and one line selected, I go to Path -> Cut Path (I do this for both lines). 110
This deletes the line we duplicated, and cuts the circle at the intersection point with the traced lines. I then delete the parts of the circle I don't need. [Pics 5 and 6]
5. Next is combining the paths into a single path. This is done converting all of the lines into a path using Path -> Object to Path. Then select all lines, select the "edit paths by nodes tool" in the left toolbar, select all of the nodes, then select the "join selected endnodes with a new segment" button. [Pics 7 and 8]
6. The last thing in Inkscape you may want to do is resizing the outline to it’s actual size, this will simplify things a bit later on. In my case, my ornaments were about 62 millimeters in diameter, so that’s what I resized the outline to fit. Make sure to lock the scaling, so that the widht and height stay in proportion. [Pic 9]
7. You now have the outline that will be the ornament! Save this as an SVG.
If any of these steps are hard to follow, I recommend following along in the video tutorial above.
Attached to this step is the SVG outline that I made (just for reference).
Step 2: Downloading Topographic Data
Next up is getting actual topographic data that we can use. There are a number of sources online for this, but I found TouchTerrain to be the best for its customizability with parameters for 3D printing.
1. Using this tool, the first step is moving over to the area you want to get data for. [Pic 1]
2. And in my case, because my circle dips a bit into Canada, I need to change my data source to one that includes both the US and Canada.
3. Then I increase the transparency, and do my best to line up the box borders as near to the outline that we made in Inkscape as possible. This will make the next step easier. 110