Fabrication of personalized lithophane via additive manufacturing

Abstract Industry 4.0 encourages the combination of latest technologies and manufacturing systems. The Additive Manufacturing (AM) may play a fundamental role in Industry 4.0 as it has capability of turning a 3D model data into a product without much human intervention. Moreover, the requirement for eliminated tools and fixtures and material waste make it suitable for industry of the future. The 3D model data, generated using modeling software is utilized in order to fabricate a three-dimensional object. However, the modeling software has some limitations regarding the conversion of the 2D digital image into a 3D model. It makes difficult direct additive manufacturing of 2D digital image. Although, there are some online resources available for this purpose. However, the detailed discussion on the algorithm is not available. Therefore, this article presents an approach for additive manufacturing of lithophane using 2D digital image. It mainly concentrates on the development of Graphical User Interface (GUI) for generating point cloud data and STL using a 2D digital image in MATLAB environment. The developed algorithm is discussed in detail for lithophane fabrication. The proposed approach takes 2D digital image from the user and converts it into 3D model data. Furthermore, the material deposition tool path is also prepared using generated 3D model data. Finally, the proposed approach is validated and tested by performing additive manufacturing. The obtained results have shown the conformity between the additive manufactured lithophane and given a 2D digital image. The obtained results of the current study may be useful in industry 4.0 for fashion and jewelry products.