Inspired by @ClayJar’s recent how-to thread, I sat down and milled out the volcano out my front window, and it’s four siblings up and down the Cascades. I work for my county’s Office of Emergency Management, and these will be used in the office as part of an eventual series of natural hazard displays.
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Please give us more info on the process. I live in New Zealand and volcanoes are a way of life for us.
The recent HowTo thread he was referring to is Terrain Relief Models, Unabridged, in which I attempted to cover the full process in considerable detail. If you’d want to make your own models of New Zealand topography, you obviously won’t be using USGS elevation data, but a cursory search seems to indicate that you can get (some) digital elevation data from LINZ.
Personally, I’m wondering if anyone can ID all the models. Obviously, ‘92 is Mount Saint Helens – my MSH model is on display in my parents’ kitchen (next to their Cheez-Whiz jar of ash, actually). The others I couldn’t tag as easily. Nice and interesting torch styling on '91, by the way.
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Thanks…I missed that. Not sure my skill level is up to that yet. In fact I know it isn’t but something to aim for.
Click here if you want to know which model is which mountain
'89: Mount Baker
'90: Glacier Peak
'91: Mount Rainier
'92: Mount Saint Helens
'93: Mount Adams
I thought I had them in north-south order, but it turns out Mount St Helens is a tiny bit further south than Mount Adams.
The process was super simple - trim the elevation data to the size I wanted, run the QGIS plugin that turns it into a grayscale image, put that into Meshcam to turn it into a 3D model. I chose to do the actual toolpaths in Fusion 360 as that’s what I’m most comfortable with, but it could be done with Meshcam just as easily. All of the stock was assorted 4x4x2" turning blanks from Rockler.
Probably the hardest part for me was getting QGIS installed - I do a lot of work in ArcGIS for work and personal pursuits, and I wanted to make absolutely sure the programs didn’t conflict with each other.
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That’s nice work. I would like to do something similar, but it may require me to do my entire state as elevation is pretty flat locally. Unfortunately, this is what the volcano of indiana looks like:
Thanks for the inspiration to try something more than just the boxes I have been chugging out!
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