Looks like a fat PNG export is a much better idea :
(actually 4 heavy 10000x6000px PNG exports, photomerged in photoshop using over 5Gb of cache memory)
(actually 4 heavy 10000x6000px PNG exports, photomerged in photoshop using over 5Gb of cache memory)
It works!
I underestimated the required number of connectors, though, or maybe I missed something when cutting.
But it works!
Super hard to assemble without a different color for continents and oceans.
And the pacific ocean is a huge, empty place (among others)
Will have to deal with that…
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It’s taken me a while to find some time to work on it, but I managed
finally to load the worldmap into python and convert the Bezier curves in
the paths into something that I can translate to a sphere and back to the
triangulated surface (this library is awesome:
GitHub - mathandy/svgpathtools: A collection of tools for manipulating and analyzing SVG Path objects and Bezier curves.). There’s still a bunch of things
to figure out, but I should have a simple proof of concept running soon,
hopefully.
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That’s an idea… 
Man, sounds promising! If it works, it opens a whole new range of possibilities.
I think I should take that intro to python class…
Looks awesome. How did you get the last piece in?
There is a small, well trained monkey that lives inside.
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I worked on two separate hemispheres and assembled them at once. It took me a while though, because I made slightly different sizes of connectors (and did 5 different laser batches so the laser kerf and angle changed), so some connections were much tighter than others.
It felt like tectonic plates, every time I managed to join it somewhere, another part would pop open.
As it’s not extremely tight right now, I’ll probably divide it again in two (pseudo)hemispheres and glue them.
As for finishes, I’m planning to hand burn this prototype with a woodburner because the contours are really not that visible and the whole thing pretty much looks like a simple sphere.
But I’m hoping to work with closed contour lines that I can etch in the next version.
Also, I’m still considering acrylic connectors. I was sticking to wood connectors, because I like the idea of it being 100% wood, but I think I scaled them down as much as possible and they are still quite prominent. We’ll see after it’s etched…
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Such a cool project. I’ve been surprised how hard it is to find a good large globe to purchase. Hope to see it in person one day
There’s a cool technique you could try for the contour lines, too. To make
really thick lines for text and stuff, I’ve seen people defocus the laser
and crank the power way up.
There will be a lot more (i hope).
but I will lose all my nice precise intricate lines! 
I was quite busy this past month, but I could finally take some time to test some continent etching this week.
It’s painfully slow, but I’m pretty happy with the result
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Japan’s top design award this year went to a world map:
It was the same idea but in the opposite direction than @baptiste’s project (and than the dymaxion map). Rather than increase the number of pieces in their simulated sphere, the used the smallest polyedra (a pyramid), and projected the sphere onto it. The cool part is that you can flatten out the pyramid and cut it into a rectangle, so they ended up with a decent looking map with lots of cool properties (less distortion, etc), and without the funky shape of dymaxion.
Definitely felt a kick in the pants to get back on track on this…
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Oh my god, they killed Mercator!
You bastards!
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Finally finished an etched version of the globe.
It takes 5 times longer to cut than the simple outlines. But it looks better!
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Saw that at the Crawl!
Looked awesome
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Really nice Baptiste! Well done!
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