What Is a Lithophane Exactly?
True lithophanes are porcelain pieces that have designs pressed into them when the porcelain is soft.
Then, when held up to a light, the image becomes visible.
Sydney Louw Butler / How-To Geek
When you hold the lithophane up to the light, your original image appears.
I’m going to assume you already know how to load, slice, and print regular 3D models.
For example,Curais a popular free slicing app that natively supports making lithophanes.
Sydney Louw Butler / How-To Geek
Here I’ve chosen one of my favoritemacro photos.
When you do this, Cura will present you with this box of parameters.
The other option is to use a specialized lithophane tool.
The one I used here is theIt’s Litho Lithophane Maker, but there are oodles of them online.
It then goes into your slicer before being sent to your printer.
The most reliable way is to print it flat on its back.
However, this means the quality of the print is determined by the line width of your printer.
That, in turn, is limited by the nozzle diameter you’re currently using.
Typically, this is 0.04mm and that’s exactly what I was using withmy K1 Max.
Then the quality prefs of your printer, which mainly affect layer height, will come into full effect.
For example, It’s Litho has a number of pre-made stands and mounts as I mentioned before.
you could add integrated frames too, there’s plenty of customization.
