Summary

Tried my hand at creating an electoral college map of the lower 48. At full scale, each state's height is its electoral vote in millimeters.

Print Settings

Printer Brand:

Printrbot

                                            <p class="detail-setting printer"><strong>Printer: </strong>                     <div><p>Simple Black</p></div></p>                                                                                <p class="detail-setting rafts"><strong>Rafts: </strong>                     <div><p>Doesn't Matter</p></div></p>                                                                                <p class="detail-setting supports"><strong>Supports: </strong>                     <div><p>No</p></div></p>                                                                                <p class="detail-setting resolution"><strong>Resolution: </strong>                     <div><p>.2064mm</p></div></p>                                                                                <p class="detail-setting infill"><strong>Infill: </strong>                     <div><p>15%</p></div></p>                                                        <br>                        <p class="detail-setting notes"><strong>Notes: </strong>                    </p><div><p>Printed at .2064 to make sure the difference between 3 and 4 vote states was not lost. I only used 1 shell as each state's border is rendered separately. When I printed this on my printerbot, I scaled it to half size. In that case, the boundary between states that have the same number of votes (e.g. North/South Dakota) is faintly visible. There are technically gaps along the state borders, but at that scale they are lost to the print resolution.</p></div>

How I Designed This

Started with this map: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:SVG_maps_of_the_United_States#/media/File:Blank_US_Map_48states.svg

I used Inkscape to clean up some of the details and added a border. From there, I imported it into Fusion 360 where it was quite easy to extrude each state based on its electoral vote count. Nebraska and Maine have a slightly different method of allocating electoral votes, but I just added them together in those cases.

Electoral College Map