The printed plate
The end of the descent: one valley, and the town standing in it.
Black Mountain
Four towns in one Appalachian valley
▶ Play it onlineBlack Mountain, Montreat, Ridgecrest and Swannanoa sit in a row along one valley with the highest peaks in the eastern United States above them. Four pieces makes this one of the easiest plates in the collection, which suits it — it is a puzzle for a young child in that valley, whose first map should be the ground they can see out of the window.
What a child works out
- Towns in a valley are strung along the flat part.
- Four pieces can still be a real map.
- The mountain behind the town has a shape you can hold.
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 176 × 250 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 Black Mountain.
The plate
- Pieces
- 4 pieces
- Plate
- 176 × 250 mm
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 87 m
- Vertical exaggeration
- × 1
- Thickness
- 8.8 mm
- Smallest piece
- 932 mm²
- Fit
- 0.29 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
- Black Mountain
- Montreat
- Ridgecrest
- Walkertown
Zoom in, zoom out
A piece of each of these is the subject of the next one. Each plate is redrawn at its own scale, so it is a real map at every level rather than an enlargement of the one above.
Follow the borders — World to continent to country to state to township
More from Close to Home
See all →
Land of Sky
Forty-three townships around Asheville
The most pieces of any plate in the collection, at a scale where you can find the road you live on.
- Pieces
- 43 pieces
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 522 m
- Suitable for
- Ages 8 and up
- Price
- CHF 15.00
Ticino
Eight districts on the sunny side of the Alps
Bellinzona, Locarno, Lugano, Mendrisio, Blenio, Leventina, Riviera, Vallemaggia — eight pieces, all mountain.
- Pieces
- 8 pieces
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 387 m
- Suitable for
- Ages 6 and up
- Price
- CHF 15.00
Canton Zürich
Twelve districts around the lake
The whole canton at 305 metres to the millimetre, with the lake, the Glatt valley and the Albis ridge.
- Pieces
- 12 pieces
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 305 m
- Suitable for
- Ages 6 and up
- Price
- CHF 15.00