The globe will be erected on a site outside of Phoenix, Arizona, and will hopefully become a tourist attraction as a way to promote worldwide education. Plans are to have an 8,000 seat auditorium surrounding the globe, which will rotate on its axis, turning once every 20 minutes. These 14,000 sections will then be combined to create the massive structure. There will be a total of 129,000 of these panels, which will then form sections consisting of 9 panels. Each 4-inch tile is then attached to a mounting panel in groups of 81, making up a larger triangle panel measuring 3 feet per side. Once printed the tiles are sent to the students who then will put on the finishing touches by adding colored glazes. Every feature, both man-made and natural, which is larger than 30 feet will be viewable on this scaled down model of our planet.Ī look at just how big the 3D printed globe will beĪt this point the models will be printed on one of 200 color 3D printers located in schools, museums, and other areas.

To further elaborate on the scale of the Great Globe Project, it will take approximately 10.5 million 4-inch 3D printed triangular tiles to complete. Weighing in at a massive 3.5 million pounds, the globe will have a volume greater than that of the Empire State Building. Actually, the planned 3D printed crowdsourced Earth will have a diameter about the size of a city block and as high as a 42 story building (420 feet). You may be thinking right now, “OK, big deal, 1:100,000 scale is tiny.” In fact, it’s not tiny at all when you are talking about a model of the Earth. The initiative, which will be placed in the hands of primarily middle school students over an extended period of time, looks to 3D print a 1:100,000 scale model of the entire Earth. One initiative called the Great Globe Project has set out to crowdsource a massive 3D print of the world which will make WeTheBuilders’ projects look like child’s play. For instance, they have recently printed a 198-piece bust of Benjamin Franklin. This idea for printing an object in multiple sections has caught on, and recently an organization called WeTheBuilders has set out to crowdsource large 3D printed items by assigning a section of each print to each individual taking part. Many hobbyists and designers alike tend to get around these limitations by printing larger objects in several pieces. Desktop 3D printers are limited in that only objects of a certain size are able to be produced in a single piece. We have seen so many incredible collaborative efforts involving 3D printing over the last couple of years. A model of the proposed location of the globe

Earth 3d model project