Canton Bern
Twenty-six districts, Jura to Jungfrau
▶ Play it onlineBern is three landscapes in one canton and the puzzle makes it obvious: the parallel ridges of the Jura at the top, the rolling Mittelland in the middle where nearly everyone lives, and the Bernese Oberland at the bottom printed white with snow. Very few political units contain that much variation, and holding all twenty-six pieces at once is the fastest way to understand why the canton argues with itself about so much.
What a child works out
- The Jura's ridges are parallel because they were folded, not piled.
- One canton can hold three completely different kinds of country.
- Where the snow line sits is a fact about height, and you can see it.
A download, to print yourself
- A .3mf file with the colours already assigned
- One STL per piece, for any other slicer
- A print guide with the settings and the order to print in
- For your own use; the licence is in the download
What you need to print it
- A build plate that takes 250 × 176 mm: the Bambu Lab A1, P1S and X1C (256 mm) do, the A1 mini (180 mm) does not
- A multicolour setup such as an AMS, for the colours as designed
Printed it? Got an idea?
Send me photos of your print and I'll add them to this page — or tell me what you'd add, leave out or change on Canton Bern.
The plate
- Pieces
- 26 pieces
- Plate
- 250 × 176 mm
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 724 m
- Vertical exaggeration
- × 1
- Thickness
- 8.8 mm
- Smallest piece
- 100 mm²
- Fit
- 0.35 mm clearance
- Material
- PLA, printed in Switzerland
B5 — the size of a school exercise book.
How much ground one millimetre of plate covers.
Height is stretched by this factor so the relief is readable at desk size.
Nothing is cut smaller than a child can pick up.
Printed in place, so every piece seats first time without sanding.
Every named piece
- Aarberg
- Aarwangen
- Bern
- Biel
- Büren
- Burgdorf
- Courtelary
- Erlach
- Fraubrunnen
- Frutigen
- Interlaken
- Konolfingen
- La Neuveville
- Laupen
- Moutier
- Nidau
- Niedersimmental
- Oberhasli
- Obersimmental
- Saanen
- Schwarzenburg
- Seftigen
- Signau
- Thun
- Trachselwald
- Wangen
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- Scale
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- Scale
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- Suitable for
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- Price
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- Pieces
- 12 pieces
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 305 m
- Suitable for
- Ages 6 and up
- Price
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