Elegoo Saturn 3 Ultra 12K Review: Resin Printing Made Easy (and Big)

I’m an enormous fan of resin 3D printers. While the liquid resin is usually a little more durable to work with than typical filament printers, the outcomes are sometimes far more detailed and look better. However, there are some limitations to the Elegoo Mars 3 that I used up to now. Things like its small print mattress, or ensuring it’s correctly ventilated as a result of resin printing may be poisonous, imply I don’t flip to it as usually as I’d like. The new Elegoo Saturn 3 Ultra, then again, fixes all of those issues and extra.

What I like most about resin printing is that it allows me to be an even greater nerd. I’ve associates who play numerous D&D, and I wish to make minifigs for them. When I make costumes for Dragon Con, I discover it best to print numerous the equipment or particulars that I haven’t got the talents to craft myself out of different supplies like foam. With the bigger print measurement and a greater filtering system, the Saturn 3 Ultra 12K made my desires of constructing nerdy stuff a extra handy actuality.

Printing Space Galore

The largest benefit of the Elegoo Saturn 3 Ultra 12K in comparison with different comparable 3D printers is simply how a lot area you must print. My Mars 3 has a construct quantity of 153.36 mm x 77.76 mm x 175 mm. That’s slightly below 7 inches tall, with a roughly 6- by 3-inch print mattress. That’s ok for printing D&D miniatures, small trinkets, or board recreation items. But it could actually get actually restrictive if you wish to do a lot that’s bigger than that.

The Saturn 3 Ultra, then again, has a positively large 218.88 mm × 122.88 mm × 260 mm construct quantity. That means the print mattress itself is round 8.6 inches by 4.8 inches, with a whopping 10.2 inches of top. Put extra merely, the dimensions of objects you possibly can construct is greater than triple that of the Mars 3.

You won’t suppose a few further inches would matter, however it makes all of the distinction on this planet. The printer got here in helpful when my accomplice needed a prop for her Suzume costume. In this film, the principle character groups up with an animate youngsters’s chair (simply go along with it) with a very distinct look.

We thought of a lot of methods to recreate this character. We may construct it out of wooden (we had no woodworking instruments), we may make it out of froth (most likely the neatest possibility, however we needed it to be sturdy sufficient to outlive a conference), or I may 3D-print some items and glue all of them collectively. But the Mars 3 solely had sufficient area to make a teeeeeny tiny model. And that’s not what my accomplice needed.

The Saturn 3 Ultra got here to the rescue. With a little bit finagling, I used to be capable of match each single piece of the chair–the again, the bottom, three lengthy legs and two small supporting rods–right into a single print. The complete print took about 14 lengthy hours–the bottom of the chair was stretching the bounds of that tremendous tall print quantity–however ultimately, I used to be capable of make all of the components wanted for my accomplice’s costume companion with perhaps a half hour of fiddling in 3D software program, and a day of ready for a print to complete.

Attention to Detail

Resin printers are so interesting as a result of they’ll recreate element that filament-based printers battle with. They use ultraviolet gentle, projected via a digital show, to remedy solely the components of a pool of liquid resin which might be needed for the print. And the display screen within the base of the Saturn 3 Ultra 12 has a very absurd degree of element.

The 12K on this printer’s full title refers to precisely the identical factor it means in TVs. Your 4K TV has 4 thousand (roughly) traces of horizontal decision. Likewise, the LCD display screen within the Saturn 3 Ultra has a decision of 11,520 x 5,120. When packed right into a 10-inch show, it means the printer can create fashions with element on a scale measured in tens of micrometers.

In observe, meaning the Saturn 3 Ultra could make some extremely intricate fashions. Elven castles and collectible figurines with complicated particulars like dragon scales are good for this gadget. But one of the crucial spectacular fashions I printed was this set of epaulets from the show The Orville.