I laser cut a map of where I lived in Tokyo. I made so many mistakes, but I was happy with the final result.

I thought it would be easy – download nasa height map data, turn it into an svg, and laser cut. But when I downloaded the height map data for the area, I found there was missing data. The contour lines weren’t close loops, but open loops. I had to painstakingly manually correct, the manually fix the train lines, removing overlapping lines that would causing the laser cutter to burn too deeply, and simplify some terrain. I even had to write a python program to help fix the data file. But I was happy with the final result.