Creating this lithophane box as a late Christmas present was fun, challenging, and time consuming. There were mistakes made, and things that I will do different the next time, but I would not trade this experience or this box for a 100 perfect ones. (See below for further details.)
After seeing the box as shown in the video, I decided that the frame needed to be black in order to make the photos “pop” more. I had two options for doing this. I could break out some black filament and reprint the entire box (I don’t like wasting anything), or I could take some black acrylic paint and start the painting process. I chose to paint. Below are some pictures of the final product.
So this was my first attempt at actually creating a light box. I found some small LED lights from Amazon to use in the box that are battery operated and have a remote. I made a single lithophane night light for some friends, but this was a new experience.
The lithophanes were printed on an original Prusa iMK2 printer, and the frame pieces were printed on a PrintrBot Simple Metal Plus. Both machines print beautifully, which helps when trying to do a project like this. People have also asked if I would make one of these for them, and I would, but I’m not sure how to price something like this. I could save a ton of time by printing the frame out of black filament, which I’ll do on on the next one. My other concern is that people might expect perfection, and that’s just not going to happen. Nothing in making is perfect. Perfection comes from a factory (sometimes), but not from making 🙂
