BY ITSLITHO
Valentine’s day is coming, which would be the perfect moment to show your girl or wife, not all 3D prints are useless. We can show our loved ones that all the time and money we invested to improve our skills were really worth the effort, by creating a beautiful 3D printed valentine gift for her.
A valentine’s gift is more than only useful, it can open a lot of doors when your girl or wife is happy with you and your 3D printer! Just imagine the possibilities for a moment… Done? Then let’s get started!
This time we will focus on 3D printed sphere lithophane. We’ll guide you step-by-step on how to make your sphere lithophane with a valentine twist to it. At the end of the guide, we give you more design ideas for the valentine sphere lithophane.
First you should go to the ItsLitho lithophane maker tool preferably in a different tab to follow this guide alongside the ItsLitho lithophane maker tool. Once you’ve done that, we can begin to create our valentine sphere lithophane!
We start by uploading the image. The image we used for the print can be found here. You are able to upload multiple images, but for this print, we only use one.
Next we move on to the edit your image tab. This tab is very useful for adjusting the brightness and contrast settings. This may significantly improve the results of your lithophane. Although not strictly necessary, it can greatly enhance your lithophane!
When we are happy about our image we can start creating our model. With ItsLitho you can create a sphere lithophane in just one click, by clicking on the sphere in the shape select box! We choose to increase the diameter for this print, but that’s all up to you.
We would like to finetune the sphere by adding a frame on the bottom. This will ensure the bottom of the lithophane is flat, making it easier to print.
ItsLitho will give you a warning in the quality options when the file is too large. This warning is based on the maximum file size of what the slicer can handle. Therefore we increase the mm per pixel. This will lower the filesize. Don’t worry, you will not see a difference in the quality of your printed lithophane. You can increase it up to 0.3 mm without seeing a difference.
The only thing left to do is to download your Valentine lithophane! Press the download button in the lower right corner of the lithophane preview screen. Your high-quality lithophane is now being generated which might take two to five seconds. After this your download is ready! Press “Download lithophane” to download your creation.
The next step is to slice your lithophane and print it. Supports are optional but it is possible to print the sphere lithophane without supports!
This is only one of the many possibilities which can be made with the tool. Another great way to use the sphere is a moon lithophane lamp. You can download the moon sphere texture with and without text here. You can also write a text on it yourself, or edit a picture in the image!
Did you like this guide? Like and share it with your friends! Are you printing your own Valentine’s gift with ItsLitho? Share it on socials and tag us!
Free online designing software that helps you create high-quality 3D printed lithophanes. It’s a simple yet powerful cross-platform lithophane maker.
