Multi Material Lithophane Birthday Gift

thingiverse

This 3D print and woodworking project was created to celebrate my father's 90th birthday. I've shared a three-part series on YouTube that explains how I designed, fabricated, and assembled the Lithophane birthday gift: Part One - https://youtu.be/j1sYVJjAWyM Part Two - https://youtu.be/ZCB_XITecpc Part Three - https://youtu.be/OGat7BQAOxw This project demonstrates the value of using the right technology and material for the job. Printing the base in wood would have been extremely time-consuming and might have caused stability issues since it needed to be heavy enough to support the model properly. On the other hand, 3D printing is ideal for the lithophane, numbers, and top frame. The excellent website at http://3dp.rocks/lithophane/ was used to create the lithophane STL file. Fusion 360 was used to design the 3D printed top frame and numbers. To speed up the print, I used both my Prusa i3 MK3 and Creality Ender 5 printers. The components were glued together with superglue and attached to the wood base with hot glue. I started with an image that measured 3539 x 1179 pixels. I set the 3DP Rocks Lithophane model settings to maximum size of 230, thickness 4, border 4, thinnest layer 0.8, vectors 4, base 10, and selected the outer curve model. The lithophane was printed in Prusa White PLA material. I substituted a DRVAX YouTube channel logo for my family photos as an example of the Lithophane STL file.