Lithophane Print Settings

Information:
To get the best results from our “Blaze” style lithophanes they need to be printed in an off white PLA or similar material(standard black and white style lithophanes work best with a cool white plastic). The warm looking lithophanes in our photos use Colorfabb Standard White PLA/PHA, while the black and white style uses Colorfabb nGen White . If you want the warm/blaze style and use normal cool white plastic you won’t get the same look, even with a warm/red backlight(which is fine if printing a normal lithophane). To check if your material is suitable for a warm/blaze style lithophane, shine a white torch or light through something flat that you’ve printed, it should look a slightly amber colour if its an off white material suitable for these lithophanes(the more amber it looks, the warmer your finished lithophane will look when backlit).

Once printed you can experiment with different backlights, for the Blaze look we use a bright warm LED lamp(normally 2500-2700k), the contrast can also be improved if you have a secondary white/cool LED. Checkout out our guide on colour temperatures here. How the end result looks all depends on the plastic you use and the type of backlight.

Recommended Print Settings:
0.1mm-0.12mm layer height. It’s highly recommended you research the “magic number” for your printers Z axis and use a multiple of that. Prusa has a great calculator you can use. Prusa Calculator
Walls/Shells: 6(or more if you are making a particularly thick lithophane) to allow mostly walls, the infill will take care of the rest(frames etc).
Infill: 99%, not 100%*
Bed Temperature: 1st layer should be 60c for PLA, then 55c for the 2nd followed by 50c for the remainder of the print. This keeps the PLA stuck to the bed but stops some curling, elephant foot and general distortion of the base edges that can happen when printing with a 60c bed for the whole print.

A brim is also vital as it helps hold the lithophane in place (18-20 brim outlines should be enough). In S3D there’s an option for multiple brim layers(it’s actually called “Skirt layers”), setting this to 3 or 4 gives you a strong brim that peels off easily when the print is complete.

Lithophane Brim (18 outlines)
Simplify3D Brim Settings

Cura Print Speeds:-

Infill Speed: 45mm/s
Outer Wall Speed: 30mm/s
Inner Wall Speed: 30mm/s
Top/Bottom Speed: 25mm/s
Travel Speed: 90mm/sec
Initial layer Speed: 18mm/s
Initial Travel Speed (for the first 1-2 layers): 60mm/s

These speeds are just a guideline, your printer speeds may be slightly different.

Simplify3D Print Speeds:-

Default Printing Speed: 50mm/s
Outline Underspeed: 60%
Solid Infill Underspeed: 80%
Support Structure Underspeed: 70%
X/Y Axis movement: 100mm/sec
Z Axis movement: 16.7mm/s
First Layer Speed: 40%

These speeds are just a guideline, your printer speeds may be slightly different.

Optional settings if possible on your Printer/Slicer.

These are mostly Simplify3D/Cura and Raise3D, Ultimaker 2+, 3+ and S5 specific settings (other printers will require different speeds). In S3D use the “Starting Script” section in “Scripts” to add the required acceleration and jerk values, in Cura make sure the Acceleration and Jerk Control settings are enabled(see below pics).
Acceleration: 1000mm/S2 (Ultimaker default is usually 3000-5000mm/S2) – If you have a Creality printer like the CR-10 and it’s variants, the acceleration should be 350mm/S2. If you want extremely high quality lithophanes on your Ultimaker/Raise3D or similiar high end 3D printers and are willing to put up with a lot of extra print time you can set the acceleration to 400mm/S2.
Jerk: 10mm/s (default is usually 20mm/s) – If you have a Creality printer like the CR-10 or it’s variants, the Jerk should be 8mm/s.

Cura Speed, Acceleration and Jerk values

A note on slicing our lithophanes in Simplify3D:

It’s easiest to slice our lithophanes in Cura(or Slic3rPE/PrusaSlicer) as there’s an extra step in Simplify3D due to the way the lithophanes are created(this by design to allow additional editing/printing options for more advanced users).

If you want to use Simplify3D you just need to do the following:
1. Load the lithophane STL into S3D as normal.
2. Click Mesh–Separate Connect Surfaces
3. Slice as normal

The added bonus of doing this is you can re-crop the lithophane into the frame if you wish, or easily resize or remove the frame altogether. You can also print the frame in one material/colour and the lithophane in another using this method(if your printer supports dual extruders).

If you don’t do the above in S3D there may be a tiny gap between the frame and the lithophane when you actually slice the model.

If you have problems slicing/printing or just want a known good lithophane slicer profile, we have some below for download. 

You may need to adjust some or all of the above settings to match your own printer/setup, but they’re an excellent starting point.

*1% might not seem like much, but it can really change the behaviour of your slicing engine(Cura, S3D etc). It’s really only useful when printing the lithophanes that have frames as part of the 3D model. The wall settings we recommend cover the lithophane itself and it’s rare that there’s any actual infill in those, it’s all just walls/shells. But the frames can be big and take up a lot of print time. Changing the infill to 99% can save you an hour or more over the length of a 16-17 hour print(not always, but quite often). This is in Cura mostly, although we’ve seen similar results in Simplify3D and Slic3r PE.