One World

You could make out from the travel blogs on this site that my family loves to explore. Our boys were born into it. To continue doing that, where else should we be other than be at the center of the globe, Dubai with the world’s best airline – Fly Emirates.

Being said that, you might have also noticed that the we are equally keen to experiment with tech.

For long I had this big audacious idea of building a map to visualize the world we explored so far and plan forward. We brainstormed on couple of ideas:

Option 1: Get a big LCD TV, add a touch panel on top, connect it to a Raspberry Pi along with Google photos and enclose it all in a wooden frame. Ultimately, we thought of building a big, interactive, digital photo frame. Something straight forward and easy to accomplish. But that did not sound cool enough. To spice it up, we decided to add some intelligence into it based on our learnings from the vision systems in our hexabot project. Frame should recognize the people in front of it and automatically display their photos or something in those lines. Yeah! Now we are talking!

Option 2: Go dump and analog but classic and artistic. Well, techno artistic. The idea was to CAD and 3D print all the countries, put them together, paint the topography, use fiber optic cables to light up the places we have been and frame it up. We weren’t sure of the complications behind it as we never did something this intricate before or even read about it. THAT made us loved the idea. So, we dropped the digital option and decided to go artistic and classic!

Download STL files and get started

Step 0: Plan

What should be size? What materials to use? Where to get them from? How much will it cost?

Before we even start thinking of anything complex, we decided to fix the dimensions first. Something that will look neat and suits our kind of living space. Width and height were easy to come up with, but we needed more info to fix the depth. We wanted to keep the depth to the bare minimum. For that, we got to find the smallest fiber optic unit. Also, the quality and flexibility of fibers might have an impact the height. After researching possible options and prices at the Amazons of the world, we decided to go checkout the ‘Dragon Mart’ – the best place to get DIY stuff in Dubai.

We were specific about what feature we are looking for in the fiber optic unit in terms of:

Size and shape: Fit within a maximum depth of 10cm with enough space left for ventilation
In-built lamp cooling: As the LEDs can get very hot on continuous usage, it is important to have an inbuilt cooling system to avoid any fire hazards. We were looking for one with at least two fans
Number of fibers: Each fiber will represent a trip (more or less). We decided to go with at least by 250 fibers to start. We can always add another unit when required
Power brick: Another important thing to avoid fire hazards as well as prolong the life of the LED is to have a sufficiently powerful power brick. We decided to go for 60W
Starry effects: This is more for the aesthetics. We wanted a base unit with perforated rotating disc that creates the starry/twinkle effect.

The one we chose costed around 150$ (including the base unit, 250 fibers and the power brick).

Next item to fix was the medium we want to use as canvas to stick the 3D printed countries. Choices were wood panel or acrylic sheet. We chose transparent acrylic sheet as the initial idea was to backlit the country borders (dropped that idea during the experimentation phase as we understood that it will overshadow the fiber optics). If you are planning to repeat this project, remember that both the choices (wood/acrylic) will work. After a bit of research and asking around, we found Frame Shop Dubai was the place one should go for quality acrylic sheets at a reasonable price. Azad, the man in charge, gave me a few sample acrylic pieces so that I can do my experiments before I start with the real project. Buying wood was straight forward as we do not have much options here in Dubai but ACE hardware. Postponed it for later as there is no dependency on wood for our experiments. Based on all these information, made a quick CAD model to confirm the design and dimensions.

Final planned total dimensions were 122x82x12cm with 120x80cm canvas space.

Step 1: Experiment

What type of 3DPrint filament? What type of paint… which brand? How to stick it prints on acrylic? How to install the fiber optics?

We decided to experiment a bit before we start the journey. This was important as we don’t want any hick-ups or to damage anything in the middle of the project.

Filament type: After printing few prototype parts, we chose PLA against ABS for many reasons including toxicity (we will be printing a lot of parts in a home set-up), dimensional accuracy (critical to have all the country borders line up), risk of wrapping of bigger countries etc.. Only thing that stood against PLA was the thermal properties but for this project, we did not see it as a show stopper. We used the white ST-PLA from Creality3d.
Paints:I am no artist and have no idea what painting is like. So, I had to experiment what works best for this project. What will stick, what type of paint works best etc. After trying out spray, permanent markers and acrylic, I thought of using all of them for different purposes. Will get into the details in the painting step.
Glue: This was a surprise challenge we encountered. Never saw this coming! We we planning to drill holes, take the fibers through it and then stick it in position using instant glue (Super-Glue). But, to our surprise, we found out from our experiments that instant glue melts fiber optic cables 🤯🤯🤯. Thanks to Azad from FrameShopDubai that we had enough acrylic samples to drill and experiment different glues. Next one we tried was the Bison Kit. Guess what? It also melted the fiber optics. We were lost! Next we tried was the Elmer’s Glue-All knowing its limitation of long healing time. Yes, that became an issue after all. It was not holding the fibers in place and would become a real pain when we have multiple fibers next to each other.
You know what really worked (which common sense says won't work)?
Hot glue! Yea! When everything cold melted the fibers, hot glue did not!

Step 2: 3D Print

First step into the real project – design and print the countries.

We are currently using Autodesk Fusion360 under my student license (thanks to my masters program currently running at ESCP). If you are not a student but you are interested in exploring the world of 3D design and CAD, you can also download it for free for personal use here. It is a super cool software although not as powerful as the all mighty CATIA used for aircraft designs. Unfortunately they do not offer a personal version of it.

Easiest way to start 3D design of the map is to find a SVG/PNG file of your liking and import it to your choice of CAD software. You can find many free/opensource map files in the internet. You can download the one we used here. We like the scaling and curvature of this particular map which closely resembles the reality.
Since the initial idea was to have the country borders backlit, I wanted to have a 1mm gap between each country. For this, I converted the png to svg and modified the borders to thicker black lines.
Next step is to import the file into the CAD software and scale it to the size you want to design the 3D model. Once all that is clear, start building up the third dimension again based on the scale you want the models to pop out of the canvas. We scaled it in a way that if the 3D models we create are scaled down to 7% of its original size (which fits our 120x80cm canvas), it will pop up by 1mm. That means, you can use our models to scale up to fit in a HUGE 17x11m canvas.
The basic printer we have (Creality Ender 3 V2) at home has a very small printing area (20x20x25cm), so Russia was printed in two pieces even at our scale. So, if you are planning to print it any larger, be prepared to split many more countries and stich it all together.

Step 3: Paint

When I got possessed by the gods of creativity.

This was the most demanding part of the project, at least for me. I was left along for this part as the boys travelled to India with their mom for summer holidays.

First, to put the countries together like a jig-saw puzzle wasn’t as easy as I thought. The positive part of this exercise was that now I have a better understanding of where each of those countries are in the world and how their boundaries look like. Some of them were surprising.
Secondly, painting the topography. Never ever tried my hands on acrylic painting in my life. Having a profi sister with those skills gave me a bit of confidence – there should be some element of that blood in me too, I thought 😇. If the writing skills of Advaith has come from my second sister, the artistic skills of Arjun should have come from my first sister, his persistence coming from my wife – because I don’t have any😁 of those. Well, may be the ‘life goes on’ mentality of Advaith is from me 😉😉😉. I am getting inspired continuously by the world around, particularly my family.

The baby steps I followed are below.

Placed the countries in place and spray painted a base coat with colours somewhere close to the topography
Removed the protecting film from the base acrylic sheet and carefully stuck them back in place using super-glue. Had to super careful as the super-glue is super quick and super sticky between plastic elements (acrylic and PLA).
Did further experiments with lighting. As mentioned earlier we wanted to backlit the country borders (one reason to go for transparent acrylic as the canvas). From the experiments I noticed that too much of light will overshadow the main purpose of the project. So dropped that idea. Dropping that idea also now meant that I have to fill in those gaps with acrylic paint but still leaving a very thin dip to represent the borders – was a bit of work for a non-artist like me!
Started with painting the oceans. Tried acrylic pouring method based on my research. Went okay though I had to rework to make it closer to what I had in mind.
Once oceans were completed, I started with painting the land side. Tried to make to as close as possible to resemble Google Maps. Invested in a proper artist’s canvas stand. My project was too heavy for this stand but made it work with some 3DP reinforcements.
Finally used my iPadpro for the finishing touches across the places matched with Google from a distance.

Step 4: Frame

Finally back into some wood work. First time after moving to Dubai.

As mentioned earlier, there isn’t much to research or window shop on where to find wood here. There is only one place, ACE hardware. I must say, I am not totally happy with the choice of woods we get here. It is just pine wood and it is hard to get dimensions you really want. So one has to be content and work around with what is available. Based on designed dimensions, we bought 3x 180cm long 120x12mm pieces. Back home, we dusted the tools ready to start the work. Suddenly we realized that we do not have any workshop space available in our apartment big and empty enough for wood work. So, we decided to get it done outside by a carpenter (that was a bad idea!). Along with my cousin, we went around looking for carpentry shops and finally got someone who (presumably) understood what we want to do.

Got back home, printed out the drawings from the designed CAD model, picked up the wood pieces and drove back to the carpenter. They started working on it based on my drawings. I felt comfortable when they noticed the bend on the wood and told me “First we need to correct that or else the cuts won’t come right.”. I told myself “I chose the right people!”. They suggested to do that by cutting the sides of the panel and I was okay with it as we have around 2cm more than what I need (as I want only 10cm depth while we have around 12cm wide panels). Below you can see my cousin watching closely the carpenters who preparing to make us buy more wood 😉.

But as soon as they started the detailed work, I got a bit anxious. They do not have the right tools! No proper workbench for key measurements, or a smaller circular saw, or a router machine for the slots, and many more critical stuff I would have needed if I am to do it. They are planning to do it all ‘based on experience’ and one big table saw. I was intrigued and ready to learn something new that day. Unfortunately, only thing I learned that day was that, ‘based on experience’ without the right tools will not work. It did impact the outcome. I was looking for mm level accuracy but it was no where close. Now I got a choice to rework and use the left over wood to cover for the damaged areas or buy new wood and start from scratch. I wanted to try fixing it first before spending more. Cousin jumped in and offered his big (huge) balcony as the work area and an old cabinet as the workbench! Before I start, I wanted to straighten the wood and so we planned to start the work next weekend. The work followed went like:

Soften the wood by covering them with wet towels over the night
Ironed out the bends a bit and then left it under my weight discs for rest of the week. I reviewed the progress every night and positioned the weights as required to straighten the pieces.
Went over to my cousin’s place during the weekend and worked on it as per the new plan – cut out the damaged/irregular areas and join the wood pieces to get the required lengths.
Stuck it all together and added some steel reinforcements at the joints.
Coated the pieces with wood oil to moisture proof it
Put it all together as a frame

Step 5: Light Up

Step 6: Install

Step 7: Brag

8 replies

Vikraman Nair M P says:
28 January 2022 at 3:29 pm

All the best

Reply
beena says:
24 January 2022 at 7:07 am

All the best. Go ahead. Truly very interesting

Reply
Jyothi says:
23 January 2022 at 2:17 pm

Nice! Looks great 👌

Reply
Dr Akash says:
22 January 2022 at 9:58 am

Awesome Read..I would like to Make Something as well of the places u been in India in future.Inspirational🤩🤩

Reply
- Jyothis Nair says:
  23 January 2022 at 3:19 am
  
  Thank you Akash… you have already travelled a lot… you can start with it right away… ping me if you need any help…
  
  Reply
- Jyothis Nair says:
  23 January 2022 at 3:28 am
  
  You can find a more detailed digital (Google Maps based) version here:
  https://www.jyothisnair.com/travel/
  
  Reply
Jyotsna says:
22 January 2022 at 9:04 am

Truly inspiring! 😃

Reply
- Jyothis Nair says:
  23 January 2022 at 3:20 am
  
  Thank you chechi…
  
  Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

One World

Download STL files and get started

Leave a Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply