Lithophanes

My first Lithophane, using Corel PhotoPaint 12 to crop and modify the image, and Cura slicer to convert the image into a .STL file for printing in white PLA on my Creality Ender 3 V3 SE print.

My second one was better (see below), it had a border round the picture which makes a nice frame around the print, and the bottom edge of the border adhered to the base plate better making the print stay vertical and flatter.

Some key tricks.

Crop your picture and convert to grey scale. Resize if necessary to get a resolution you can print, this picture was about 1000 pixels square, even that may be a bit higher than needed. Use a paint program, such as MS Paint, Corel Photo Paint, Adobe photoshop etc.

Add a black border to the picture, about 2 to 3 mm wide. In Corel PhotoPaint, this is just a matter of resizing the page evenly by about 50 pixels or whatever works for you, and making the background black. In Microsoft paint, create a new blank image the size of your photo plus the required border, and create a rectangle the full size of the new image, and fill it with black. Then import the photo you resized above, and centre it on the black background. Save the new image with a meaningful name, in either PNG or JPG fortmat

Start Cura, and open the picture saved above. I user the default settings in Cura when the image opened, but you could make the object thicker, say 3mm rather than 2.5, but it may darken the final image.

Put the model upright, and turn so that it is on the Y axis. Add a decent brim around the bottom, with zero gap between the brim and the model. Keep the speed lowish, I used 60mm/s, some recommend 30mm/s.

In the travel settings for your print enable retraction and enable Z hop when retracted. This will reduce sideways pressure on the model when printing, helping it to stay upright, but seems to slow the print down a lot.

If you are really competent, you could design some supports to put against the back of the object to support it sideways as it grows upwards.

Make sure you are using the correct temps for good adhesion. Some recommend a lower nozzle temp, but this caused slight layer adhesion problem for me, possibly because my temps are pretty finely tuned.

Print as usual, using white or a very pale colour filament. If your printer has an enclosure you should be good, but as the print may take 4 hours or more, watch out for artifacts caused by changing environment.