Mars: A Lithophane Lamp

After printing the lithophane moon lamp. I really wanted some of the other planets.

Problem is there is only one other planet, Jupiter, that I could find. I wanted planets which print at the same scale as the moon lamp and use the same locking mechanism. I already had designed a custom locking base for the moon lamp.

So I set forth into the solar system to see what I could get working.

First stop on my journey: Mars, the Red Planet. Hopefully the next terrestrial body man will probably visit in person. 

Test print was a 0.16 layer height on my Stock Ender 3.  Completed weight was 502g. Print time was 109 hours (4 ½ days).   This is with some generic red pla I had laying around. 

Finally uploading the files months later because I have been busy. 

My print information and observations on some file, printing, and slicing quirks below.

<> How it was made <>
I took the Lithophane moon file and extracted the locking base, and made sure it would print properly afterwords.  Which ended up being way more complicated then one would think... 

Then I took the original mars file that raTMole built and scaled it to the same size as the moon. Attempted to do some mesh cuts and a Boolean Merger. Many program crashes later I finally got a working result. (No program seems to like trying to process large Boolean mergers with meshes that have several thousand of faces... Multiple attempts each time before it would randomly complete without crashing. )

<> Notes on the printing and assembly. <>
Yes, the model is not watertight and your slicer may complain. Don't try and run an auto repair,  stuff breaks. Trust me I tried doing it in every program I could get ahold of. But it does slice/and print normally. So far as my testing has gone, your milage may very.

No Support needed, as with the moon print. If you print it solid and do your wall layers set as  ‘inside to outside’ you can print it with no supports. (Besides I don't know if you would be able to get the stuff out of the inside. So keep that in mind of you insist on supports...)

This is a lithophane so don't print it with infill it needs to be solid. Just up the wall count really high. (Cura 5.6.0 seems to crash if you go above 100 though if you are slicing with a low layer count. So just an FYI...)

This thing is quite a BEAST compared to the moon lamp, it weighs in at a little over 560 grams in program slicing estimates.  I assume this hefty weight is due to the fact there is far more variation in the topography/lithophane properties of the mars model compared to the moon. I tried to hollow it out some to reduce the amount of filament needed. But the results made for some very questionable areas. (The north pole is already quite thin, due to it needing to transmitting more light for the polar caps.) I was afraid it would become to fragile and would break.  In the end it really didn't save enough filament to make it worthwhile, so I scrapped that idea of attempting to hollow it. Make sure you have enough filament on the roll to make it to the end, would really be sad to run out 90% of the way done.

As a result of the shear amount of plastic your laying down. The print times are very long. Even compared to the moon files this is a steep jump in time. Cura estimates about 3 days (71 hours 40 minuets) and this is on .20 layers. 

Slicing can take ages at lower layer height. I think this is due to the size of the file and the face count. Don't expect it to be fast..

Slicing with really low layers gets odd results in Cura. I would have done 0.12 layers but I could never get the thing to finish slicing even waiting as much as 8 hours for it to finish slicing, at some point both Cura 5.4.0 and Cura 5.6.0 just would give up.  0.16 seems to be the lower limit I could get to work reliably, and I finally just gave up and settled on that as my print. Your milage may very, based on what slicer you use.  

As with the moon lamp you will need a slightly smaller than standard light Edison screw light bulb. A standard sized one doesn't quite fit in the hole. The light bulge in the bulb doesn't fit. 

Personally I just buy a cheap normal sized led with a plastic light defuser. I pop the light defuser cover off. This may be considered dangerous as it does leave an uncovered circuit board that is connected with the mains voltage. But it is inside an enclosed space with no way to touch the board once its all assembled.  Personally I am fine with that option, I live alone. If I need to service the light I just unplug it.  You do you; make your own decisions, I won't do it for you. If your comfortable with that route its an option I stumbled on, just figured I would share. 

Removed the locking base mechanism from the Moon lamp. Increased the scale of the Mars model to match the Moon Lamps. Merged the files.