Light Box for Lithophanes

They look great to me! Now I have to look up the work lithophanes and learn about that. :) Okay I’m back. Do you carve your lithophanes in wax and then pour plaster of paris and then pour it in procelain? That is an incredible creation!

-- Homer : "Oh, and how is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain."

No, they are actually cut out of corian. Great stuff, cuts like butter. And not as delicate as porcelain would be when that thin (low spots (ie white)) are only .04” thick.

-- Paul, http://www.coriannslithos.com

Corian? LIke the kitchen counter stuff? And then you carve those pictures into it? Do you think you could post a close of picture of the duck? I find this so interesting!

-- Homer : "Oh, and how is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain."

Yep, the kitchen counter stuff.

Here is an up close of the face:

And at an angle without the light on to see what the surface looks like:

-- Paul, http://www.coriannslithos.com

Wow- I can’t imagine how you would begin to know how to carve that in 3 dimensions. Do you have to use a caliper to measure the hills and valleys?

-- Homer : "Oh, and how is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain."

Oh no, no calipers… no super hard thinking. It’s a matter of going from a color photo to gray-scale, then there is software that converts different levels of ‘dark’ to different thicknesses. Major respect goes out to those artists long ago that could carve such a thing by hand to make a mold to pour porcelain into.

-- Paul, http://www.coriannslithos.com

If that wasn’t explained well enough, it was machine carved (CNC). They look great, what software do you use to generate the G-code?

-- A thing of beauty is a joy forever...

These are so unique well done

-- W James Brokenbourgh Custom furniture maker http://artisticwoodstudio.com/

Thanks.

A small software package called bmp2cnc. It’s sole purpose is making a ‘depth map’ of sorts out of a gray scale image.

-- Paul, http://www.coriannslithos.com

It is so interesting that 2 very unique projects made with CNC technology were posted this week. I am glad for the coincidence because it demonstrates the variety of things that can be made with this technology by skilled artisans. :)

-- Homer : "Oh, and how is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain."

Hi Arbo, do you know how bmp2cnc compares to Vectric PhotoVCarve?

Later on I’ll do some lithophanes however to start with I’ll predominantly do timber/mdf based projects.

bmp2cnc does fine for lithophanes. I believe you can do them with phtovcarve, but that one let’s you do other sorts of things where bmp2cnc doesn’t (that etched in photo look).

-- Paul, http://www.coriannslithos.com