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3D Print of Puerto Rico
A Really Cool Project and Gift Idea
For Valentine’s Day I got a great idea for a gift to my wife.
As some of you may or may not know, my wife is from Puerto Rico and the Isla de Encanta is always on her mind. I also know that she enjoys doing make-up and has a decent size collection of brushes.
While I am not an afficianado on the latter, I was able to put her interest in her homeland and her interest in make-up together to create a decent Valentine’s day gift project. This ultimately yielded a 3D printed map of Puerto Rico that can hold her make-up brushes (well, 5 of them anyway).
How I Started
Originally I wanted to take the lazy route and sought a 3D model of Puerto Rico from the internet. I could not find any that were appropriate for my needs, so I did what anyone with training in Geography would do and I went and grabbed a DEM (digital elevation model) of Puerto Rico to use for my project. I opened the DEM in R (statistical programming language) and utilized a number of packages to crop the extent to just the “big island” of Puerto Rico (no disrespect to Culebra and Vieques), and then plot the new 3D image before writing it out as an STL (Packages used are: raster; scales; sp; rasterVis; rgdal; rgl).
Touch Ups
After making the 3D model and creating an STL, I imported it into Blendr to do some touch ups. Since the model was flat it needed a base to hold any items, so I added a simple rectangle base about a half an inch thick to hold the brushes in place. I wanted to put holes into the mesh model but could not figure it out. So I ended up drilling them into the final print. I also spray painted the final product to what you see above.
Conclusion
An interesting project to say the least and I hope my wife will enjoy this gift. It was fun to make as I was able to utilize computer programming and design to fashion it into a meaningful gift which she will cherish and use for so long as it functions (and when it no longer functions I can always make another ;).
If you’re interested in seeing my other 3D prints check out my Etsy store:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/SoKoolInventions?ref=seller-platform-mcnav
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