The Ticino
Both sides of the Gotthard, on one plate
▶ Play it onlineThis is the southern Alps as a drainage system, and it is a good demonstration of what a watershed map does that a political one cannot: the basin runs straight across the Swiss–Italian border as though it were not there, because for water it is not. Valleys that Ticinesi think of as quite separate places — Maggia, Verzasca, Blenio — turn out to be neighbouring pieces of a single shape.
What a child works out
- Borders stop at a ridge sometimes, and cut across one other times.
- Alpine valleys are separate because the ground between them is high.
- Lake Maggiore is the drain, and every piece leans towards 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 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 The Ticino.
The plate
- Pieces
- 12 pieces
- Plate
- 176 × 250 mm
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 715 m
- Vertical exaggeration
- × 1
- Thickness
- 8.8 mm
- Smallest piece
- 116 mm²
- Fit
- 0.35 mm clearance
- Material
- PLA, printed in Switzerland
6 named; the rest are sub-basins the source data leaves unnamed.
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
- Brenno
- Maggia
- Moesa
- Rhein
- Toce
- Tresa
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North America by River
A continent divided only by where water goes
No countries, no states. Twenty-nine pieces, each one the whole territory that drains into a single river.
- Pieces
- 29 pieces
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 49.4 km
- Suitable for
- Ages 8 and up
- Price
- CHF 15.00
The Mississippi
The basin that drains a third of a continent
Fifteen pieces — Missouri, Ohio, Arkansas, Red, Illinois — that together are about three million square kilometres of drainage.
- Pieces
- 13 pieces
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 14.5 km
- Suitable for
- Ages 8 and up
- Price
- CHF 15.00
The Upper Mississippi
The river before the Missouri joins it
Twenty-one pieces — the Minnesota, the St Croix, the Wisconsin, the Des Moines, the Cedar — draining the northern half of the Mississippi.
- Pieces
- 16 pieces
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 4.7 km
- Suitable for
- Ages 8 and up
- Price
- CHF 15.00