Ultra-high resolution Earth topography

This extremely high resolution topographic globe of the earth prints in two halves, using around 350g PLA filament.

It was created using blender, and adds small step at the coastline to aid with recognition of coastlines.

The complete globe has nearly 8 million triangles, and so is provided hollowed and cut into two for easier printing. Nevertheless, the detail means it's challenging to slice, so I have included the GCode for Prusa mk3S in PLA.

This globe is excellent for teaching about the earth - it is possible to see / feel every seamount, mid ocean ridge, fracture zone and trench in the oceans, as well as identify clear mountain belts land features.

The print takes about 20-21h per half.

Print instructions

Tips for printing:

Use PLA. Silk or metallic filaments look fantastic with this and help bring out the extreme detail.

Calibrate your elephant foot compensation before printing - this will give a much nicer seam.

Print without support material - the inside top will be a bit messy, but it saves a lot of material and will end up inside anyway.

Print the outside perimeters nice and slow (<25mm/s) as there are a lot of direction changes and this will minimise ghosting.

Glue the two halves together with a bit of superglue.