Most of the items I print are functional items used to create things that do something of things that serve a purpose (mostly parts for other 3D Printers). Yes, Baby Groot is lovely to look at but I just don’t go there. The one exception I make, is Lithophanes. As a matter of fact, I find Lithophanes make great gifts for friends, families and loved ones. They can be nonsensical or very personal. They’re generally a hit. Following is a guest post from the creators at Lithophanemaker.com.
Lithophanemaker.com was created by hobbyist 3d printer and coder, Thomas Brooks. Thomas originally made the tool to save time when generating night light lithophanes, and then decided to share the tool with the larger lithophane 3d printing community.
A popular instructables article (https://www.instructables.com/id/Lithophane-Night-Light/) highlighted six steps that someone would need to create a night light lithophane using conventional methods. The night light lithophane design tool reduces the number of steps down to two: 1) Make lithophane stl, and 2) print stl file.
As of November 2018, https://lithophanemaker.com has five tools which have saved its users approximately 800 hours of time they would have spent editing lithophanes in CAD. The five tools provide users with a simple interface for designing
- Curved, framed lithophanes (https://lithophanemaker.com/Curved Lithophane Designer.html)
- Flat framed lithophanes (https://lithophanemaker.com/DesignWindow Lithophane.html) with optional holes for twine, a tab for a hook, or only the frame,
- Night light lithophanes (https://lithophanemaker.com/Design Night Light.html) with easily customizable features to make them compatible with almost any night light
- A lamp lithophane design tool (https://lithophanemaker.com/Lamp Lithophane Designer.html) that interfaces with lamps you already own, and finally 5) a circular lithophane (https://lithophanemaker.com/Design Lithophane Tag.html) design tool that can make Christmas ornaments, a necklace charm, or a tag for a pet’s collar.
These tools are made freely available to anyone! If you have any suggestions for ways to improve the tools please contact Thomas Brooks as support@lithophanemaker.com
