This time i made a litophane bedlamp for my friend that just graduated. For you that don't know what litophane is, you can read the description here. In short, litophane is an artwork that can only be seen clearly when we give back lit with a light source. It can be a lamp, LED or even candle.
Firstly, i made a CAD design in 2D with autoCAD and modelled in 3D using Inventor. You can see the 2D model at the picture below.
After finished with 2D model, i designed the 3D model and assembled them. First i assembled the bottom part of the lamp.
Next, i combined it with top part. I planned to make the base from acrylic which is cut by laser service. I also bought 5W AC warm light bulb as the backlight for the litophane. The design can be seen at the design folder. I sent this design to the acrylic laser cut service and wait it finished.
To make this bedlamp, we need to get 3D picture. It can be any picture of your desire. I made 3D picture by uploading 2D picture to "2D to 3D online converter" like here or here. For this project, i used the service provided by 3dprocks. Navigate to images tab at the website and then upload your image.
Next step is to configure the setting of my litophane. Navigate to settings tab then determine model setting and image settings. Make sure to change the image settings to positive image.
After configuring the images, i navigate to model tab and click download to get the STL file of your image.
Now i already have the STL file i want to print. Next step is to configure the STL file on the 3Dprint software. I used Ultimaker Cura that can be downloaded here and Creality Ender 3 as the 3D printer. With Ultimaker Cura, i can convert the STL file to GCode, the format that can be read by 3D printer. After i got the GCode, next step is sent it to the 3D printer and wait it finished.
And the last step after i got all parts ready is to assemble them. I stick the litophane with the acrylic with glue. The light bulb is mounted at the center of the base and add the cable to power source. You can see the complete result at result folder of this repository.
