When not backlit, the machined lithophane looks as below: Here is a picture of a lithophane done with my Lithophane Generator. That wasn't acceptable, so I wrote a program myself to do this. The net result was that I was having to edit the toolpath every time to avoid breaking tools or digging into the bed of my machine.
I used the CAMBam plugin several times, and found I was getting erratic thicknesses on the toolpath - usually entirely unrelated to the machining depth I had entered. They are still present in the form of pictures of people's heads in the bottom of fine porcelain tea cups and similar high quality china. They were very popular as an art form in the late 1800's, when they were made from porcelain. These amazing pictures obtain their shading by having different thicknesses of translucent material to perform shading, and then are back lit. This plugin could be used to create Lithophanes. However, I got distracted by one of the plugins in my CADCAM package (CAMBam) where there was a mysterious plugin called 'Height Map Generator'. I have only recently started using a CNC machine and want to use it for making pens. Prepare STL-geometry for 3D printing - slices and translates to G-codes.CNC Lithophanes CNC Lithophane Toolpath Generator Program Download KISSliser - this is free software (with additional features available in purchased version).Netfabb Basic - this is free software which allows to fix STL-geometry or rotate parts.Version 6 has a great new feature - export 2D geometry on a workplane, this feature is used in the instruction. This product allows to create models the way similar to solid modeling - but more simple. PTC Creo Elements/Direct Modeling Express 6 - this is free software which allows to create quick and easy mechanical models for prototypes.It allows to generate 2D geometry of gears and export it to dxf-file Gear Generator - this is not free software.Use a program which generates geometry of gears by specified parameters - this way is describes in this video instruction.E.g Inkscape (graphics editor with extension which renders a gears), FreeCAD (free CAD software), etc. Use graphics software with build in gear-generation features.This is more easy than in previous steps, but also required to find similar gears (or at least their picture) Take the photo of existing gears (e.g from a toy car), print it scaled, put on the display and draw the 2D geometry in CAD - to reproduce gear's shape.It's not easy to find gears similar to needed (even when they can be scaled) Measure existing gears and use these parameters to create 3D model in CAD in the way as above. Calculate parameters for gears manually - diameters of gear wheels, angles of teeth, etc.
3D models for gears can be created different ways - each way has pros and cons
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