Lithophane Lamp

thingiverse

This is a budget-friendly IKEA lamp hack that requires a large printer (~200mm). Utilizing this $5 lamp and these $3 lights (http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/20055421/http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/70326571/\n), I was able to create beautiful lithophane lamps for my friends and family. To begin, you will need to design the shade. Visit this website (http://maker.dongguk.edu/webclient/cylinder_litho_index.html) and upload a few pictures, select your resolution and thickness. I chose .75 base thickness, smoothing 5, 1.0 font thickness (I didn't include any text), with an Inner radius of 94 (188 Diameter in total). Make sure your printer has at least 190-200mm in diameter. Next, you'll need to create the top. You can use a plain top (187mm in diameter) or customize it using some Lithophane prints from this website (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:74322) and Tinkercad (https://www.tinkercad.com/things/2FaJk5ip8IR). Resize them using Tinkercad or 3Dbuilder. I placed the lithophanes on top of the plain top, grouped them together, and printed them out using Cura. Here are my print settings: Printer: Anet A8 Rafts: No Supports: No Resolution: .1 Infill: 100% Notes: I didn't use rafts for the top, but you should use one for the cylinder. Printing at these settings will take around 30-40 hours, depending on your printing speed. I printed at 50mm/sec and it took 34 hours for the shade and 3 hours for the top. You may not need the L brackets, as you can simply place the shade on top of the previous one and rest the new top on top of the previous one. If you prefer more light coming out of your lamp, cut the original lamp shade up about an inch or so and glue the brackets inside on the top of the new shade. Remember to use LED light bulbs, as they won't melt PLA if that's the type of plastic you're using. Also, make sure your pictures aren't too dark or bright when making the lamp shade, or it may not work properly. Good luck!