[aldepoalo]

BobART Lithophane Cutting - YouTube


This type of work is really easy to do.


picture hosting

In this example I used wax and cut the part on a small machine we have in the office.



image hosting

You can see the step over doesn't need to be super tight.



free image hosting

The images really came out awesome.

There is a trend right now for lithophane's being cut on cylinders ( PBC I think ) so that you can put a light in the middle and have the image shine through all the way around.

The above files we designed and machined with BobART.

[Trotline]

This is a capability that I've actually used, and I was really happy with how well, and how easily it was accomplished with BobART. The image was emailed to me, and I used the <Emboss from Image> feature and inverted the result to get the correct "polarity" on the resulting carve. After that, I used the <Sculpting> feature's "Smooth" function to "blur" the background. Pretty much made everything but the cats look out of focus, thus highlighting them. (I think photographers call this "Bokeh")

This was my first lithophane, and I made it from an HDPE cutting board with a very small stepover (0.003") I won't use HDPE again, because I had to clean up some "fuzzies" with an Xacto knife, and the whole thing warped, requiring a soak in the oven at 295deg, (for this particular HDPE formulation. ymmv), and clamping in a form to flatten it again. Next time, I use Corian.

I drilled out the two little tabs on top, and it's hanging in somebody's window in Atlanta now. Size is 6" x 4.5", and it looks a lot better in person than in the photo.


Luke

[jrmach]

That's awesome Trotline.How thick was the material and deep did you set the depth of cut?

[Trotline]

lol, I couldn't remember exactly, but I still have the test piece I did on an identical cutting board. The stock was 0.34" thick, and the deepest part of the carve, (the brightest part of the lithophane) measured 0.15" on the slightly smaller test cut. I think I used the same depth on the final, as the contrast looked fine on the test piece. I also forgot to mention that I did a roughing pass with a 0.125" ballnose endmill, and the finishing pass used a 0.0625" ballnose.

Luke