100mm earth lithophane mounted on a lighted base. The lithophane is printed in white and then painted with water colors. I'm no artist. I used a cheap kid's set of water colors and just tinted the painted areas. You don't need much color to make it pop. The lighted base is included in a separate profile. 

Update 2024-05-07: My sincere apologies. A user discovered an error in the earth profile. I had inadvertently turned on “detect thin walls” which causes holes and marred areas in the globe.  If you have already printed it, please re-download the current profile or turn off “detect thin walls” in the slicer. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Check out my other spherical lithophanes

Purchased Parts

I used these USB Light Sticks

Any USB extender cables will work.

Water color paint set

Printing Instructions

My profile has all my preferred settings. If you prefer to plate your own (stl's in the raw files section), I suggest the following settings:

• If using my print profile, make sure to select your printer type, plate type and filament profile from the drop down menus in the slicer.

• I printed the lithophanes at .2mm layer height with two height range modifiers (10-15mm and 98-120mm) set at .1mm layer height. This reduces the gaps in the flattest parts of the sphere.

• You could set the layer height for the whole sphere lower (like .1mm), but it will take longer to print.
• 4 walls, 100% rectlinear infill, arachne wall generator. (arachne takes longer to slice, but generates a better print in my opinion)
• I slowed down the outer wall speed to 50mm/s
• The light base should be set to .2mm layer height and 15% infill of choice.

Make Your Own Lithophanes Using My Light Base

You can generate your own lithophanes using your own photos at Lithophanemaker.com. The lithophane can be set for any diameter as long as the base is the correct size to fit in the lighted base. Your photograph should be approximately 3.3:1 width to height ratio to wrap all the way around the sphere.

I used the following settings:

Lithophane Resolution: 0.25
Sphere Diameter: 100
Picture Angular Height: 130
Picture Angular Width: 360.00
Maximum Thickness: 2.7
Minimum Thickness: .8
Cylinder Outer Diameter: 40
Cylinder Height: 10
Cylinder Thickness: 5
Cylinder Ledge Outer Diameter: 50 (make sure this is set to 50mm to fit into the light base)
Top Hole Outer Diameter: 0