Help with lithophane

[capttully 0]

So recently I have upgraded to direct drive on my Ender 3 v2.   I have been printing lithophane before the upgrade with pretty good results.  Now that I've switched to DD i haven't had any luck with it.  I have done many calibrations and i am still having problems.   Maybe someone out there can help guide me or let me know what the issue can be.  I have included the old unit print and DD unit print as you can see the difference in quality.

[dsp 20]

for starters: best way to print a litho is print it upright that way you get much better results.

use a brim to keep it standing. 

take your time to print a litho (small layers low printing speeds give the best results)

next to that use a calibration tool to calibrate your printer so it prints smooth every printer and every type of fillament is different.

If i recall correct the ender moves the bed in the y direction so make sure the width of the litho is in the y direction this will give less movement to the x axis and result in better litho's.

 

for things regarding the direct drive I can not help you, sorry

 

 

[capttully 0]

I have done all that.  I just used bed to take picture.  But I appreciate your response, thank you.  It bothers me because everything else i print comes out really good, except lithophanes

[geert_2 558]

Out of curiosity: why print upright instead of laying down? Resolution may be worse when laying down (i.e. about 0.5mm with a 0.4mm nozzle), but  I would expect the "flatness" of the whole image to be much better? Thus there should be no layer lines at all, since it is just a thin plate? So that should result in a cleaner image in see-through, I would think? Or am I missing something?

 

I tried a few small lithophane portraits that way (laying down) on my UM2 in a translucent PLA (colorFabb's "natural" spaghetti coloured PLA/PHA), and the result was quite nice: it was weird when looking directly upon it because the eyes are like sharp spikes protruding, but it looked good in see-through. But it takes some testing per material to find the best thickness, because that depends a lot on translucency. Also, I found that I needed to print slow, cool and in very thin layers, not to entrap air in-between the extruded sausages, to avoid the diagonal infill pattern lines.

 

[dsp 20]

a good resolution is key to a good litho that's why you print them upright, at first I tried them laying down as well (some how it feels unnatural printing them upright).

But the results in upright printing are a lot better.