Neon Lithophane?

[RaincloudDev]

Printing a NEON Lithophane

Today I'm printing a Neon lithophane for Reavis' Workshop on YouTube.

I've never printed lithophanes in anythning but opaque PLA, and only printed once in anything that wasn't white. The new experience alone is enough to excite me, and not doing any prior research is making it better! I actively haven't looked at any images or videos about this topic. I wanted it to be a fresh and new experience for me all around. I've printed lots of things with this neon yellow filament and I know it glows VERY well. The lights oversaturate the camera in my first tests.  I use actinic blue lights in my studio instead of blacklights (Reef Nerd here!) and I'm fairly certain it adds a huge amount of pop to the yellow, but the oversaturation is kind of ugly. I did a short test video using Ilford Multigrade filters while filming with a GoPro hero 8 and I got some really neat results.

See GoPro Hero 8 Black Filter Test

I'm currently waiting on the first test to finish printing, and I will certainly share results.

The first layers looked pretty good!
First Layers Neon Lithophane

[RaincloudDev]

IT WORKED

Neon Lithophane Finished

I'm not sure why I expected this to be anything other than awesome. The yellow PLA I'm using is transparent and UV reactive so.. Double cool. It works as a lithophane and it also glows really nicely. I'm looking forward to printing lithophanes in more colors and filament opacities. Now that I've produced a print with good quality I can work on some other ideas with this file. I'd like to produce an enclosed light box for these lithophanes that have RGB LED's inside for cool effects like basic white or color glow-or breathy flowy patterns. The sky is the limit on that kind of thing.

[RaincloudDev]

I'm jumping back in to post some updates on this whole neon lithophane process. I'm thoroughly enjoying it! Like I said in an earlier post, This all started as a test run, and now I haven't changed my filament in two weeks! It just so happens that the neon yellow is a hit!

There aren't to many special steps to take when printing neon lithophanes, but you definitely want to pay attention to a few specific things:

Lithophanes are narrow and tall by nature, which means they are really easy to knock out of wack and ruin the whole print. These have consistently taken more than 5 hours to print each, so that would be.. how do you say.. unfun. At this point I'm thinking the way to avoid errors here is to level your print bed.  On my Sovol SV01 (which is basically a Creality Ender 3) it's pretty easy to accomplish this using the attached hardware and included firmware.

On this printer, whether it's due to a warped bed or not, I have found success positioning the lithophanes near the front of the build plate. This also prevents shadows when filming!  I use a bit of Blue Painter's Tape to help with adhesion, you may find success in other methods.  The last bit that seems to help a great deal is printing with a brim. This gives the print a larger foot to help it avoid tipping over.

Next Time I'll talk about setting up the UV Light and Using filters to film in UV conditions!