Tag: 3d printing

Steward’s Notes is Makin’ (Water) Bacon!

You’ve seen it on the welcome sign.

You’ve seen it debated in city hall.

Now you can see it on your key chain!

Introducing pocket sized water bacon!

Wholly manufactured in my closet under the stairs using the latest cutting edge technology. It is now possible for you to bring home the (Water) Bacon. Visit waterbacon.ca to order yours today. A big thank you to Kawartha Local for making bacon dreams a reality.

3D Printing Peterborough Watersheds

Within the sphere of 3D printing there are a plethora of examples of how to print topographic maps. Much of this interest comes from the reproduction of topographies from popular video games or modeling significant landscape features such as mountains or canyons. The standard format has been to display these models using arbitrary or aesthetically pleasing boundaries, often a square or a circle (or even puzzle pieces)

One of the primary motivators for my acquisition of a 3D printer was the ability to reproduce landscapes with the natural watershed boundaries that already exist. This turned out to be a much more daunting task than I had initially anticipated, however I think the results were well worth it! Now that I have started to refine my techniques, I hope to be able to reproduce interesting watershed topographies for all of Peterborough and beyond!

The Mississippi River model as seen from the air (US Army Corps of Engineers, 2006)

Watershed models have a long history in the management of water resources. The US Army Corps of Engineers produced a gigantic scale model of the Mississippi basin to assist in flood prediction and management long before computers were able to complete the task. Even today, physical models are able to produce results that computers are unable reliably recreate. Perhaps with the refinement of 3D printing technologies we will once again see the models that assisted our resource planning in the past reemerge as a common element of our watershed planning future.