[vger]

Greetings all,

Since I had PhotoVCarve I decided to try a Lithophane. I use LinuxCNC to run my machine which has 24" X, 24" Y, and 9 " Z. I started with 1/4" Glacer White Corian and a family photo. I used a 1/4" endmill to take the image area down to 0.150" thick. I opted to run it with no roughing pass at all. With my Dremel mounted as a spindle running at 35K RPM and a 1/32" endmill in the chuck. The engraved area is 9" high by 12" wide. A pass depth of 1/32" with a total engraving depth of 0.125" made the thinnest areas 0.025". I Learned on the first attempt that a vacuum table was going to be needed as the material bowed up in the middle and the bit went though at that point. So I took some scrap Corian and made a box with multiple vertical supports and the top surface has 1/4" deep grooves in a 1" square pattern. I used 1/4" by 3/8" foam rubber weather stripping in the grooves for a seal around the edges and a quiet little vacuum pump that pulls just over 20. Using a dial indicator I had less than .005" variance over the surface of the table. Machine time was going to be rather lengthy for the 1,411,497 lines of G code. So.... I put the whole system on a UPS just in case. A little over 38 hours later... this is the result.

Oh yes... the backlight. I went to the local used computer shop and picked up some dead 17" LCD monitors (no charge). Took them apart and got the plexi and the diffusers. Ordered some LED strip off Ebay that had 3 LED's per inch and run on 12 Volts. I figure the backlight total cost was about $10 including the wall wart power supply.

[Trotline]

Nice work! It's really neat to pull them off the table and hold them up to a light for the first time, isn't it?

Luke

[vger]

Luke,

Yeah it really is! It's also fun to watch other peoples eyes that are looking at it when you switch on the backlight The backlight I made works great! I got the LED strips from this place on ebay...
goodswholesaler | eBay

The strip I got was the "Waterproof Super Bright 5M SMD 3528 600 White LED Flexible Strip light DC12V". It's can be cut every inch with 3 LEDs per inch. A little soldering is required, but nothing too difficult, and the strips are labeled every so often with + and - to keep polarity right. I haven't tried cutting the backlight material yet, but should be able to custom size it if needed. The frame I made is about an inch thick with a 2 inch width out of bamboo. It's in 2 layers so the litho and the backlight are captive and the power connector is recessed in the back side so it can be flat on a wall if desired.

Now the easy part.... make 4 more of them for Christmas presents for the family.