Lithophane LED Frame

I needed a small present for my fathers Birthday and decided to print a Lithophane of him and my mother. I used this website to design my Lithophane. I decided to design and print a frame with integrated LEDs so the picture is visible even when its dark.

The good thing about the frame is that you can push out the picture and easily replace it with another one.

The Litho its designed for is 119mm*78mm*3mm with a frame thickness of 3mm (that part will be hidden behind the frame)

If you want one in a different size i included the fusion 360 file(sorry for the messy file structure, i'm not a fusion expert).

I split the back of the frame off, so its easier to print and doesn't need as much support.

A few things to look after:

• do NOT use the Gcode file, its always a better idea to slice it yourself so that it's safe to print

• make sure you use a power adapter with enough ampere and the right volt range that matches the one of your LED strip.
  • i used this calculator to check if my 12v 1 Ampere was enough

• depending on the LEDs you are using they could get hot and therefore bring the plastic up to or above it's glass transition temperature. It's  recommended to test how hot the LEDs get in advance or/and use a material with higher GTT
  •  in my case PLA was good enough

• glue the LED-Strip to the side walls and NOT to the backplate - otherwise you will see light hotspots through the litho and we want an as evenly lit lithophane as possible
  • LEDs with up to 13mm width will fit. the frame without editing the files

parts i used:

Switch

LED's - its probably cheaper to go with an LED-strip with white/warm white only… i had a few leftovers of that Strip and that's why i used these (all i connected was the WW channel).

Power Jack Adapter - the frame is designed to use a Female Adapter as the power adapter already had a male one.

Hope you like the idea and it it useful to you/give you an idea to design your own frame.

If you have questions or i can help you somehow just write a comment.