I’m an enormous fan of resin 3D printers. While the liquid resin is usually a little tougher to work with than typical filament printers, the outcomes are sometimes way more detailed and look better. However, there are some limitations to the Elegoo Mars 3 that I used previously. Things like its small print mattress, or ensuring it’s correctly ventilated as a result of resin printing will 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 really like most about resin printing is that it permits me to be an even greater nerd. I’ve associates who play a number of D&D, and I wish to make minifigs for them. When I make costumes for Dragon Con, I discover it best to print a number of the equipment or particulars that I haven’t got the talents to craft myself out of different supplies like foam. With the bigger print dimension and a greater filtering system, the Saturn 3 Ultra 12K made my desires of creating 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 possibly 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 peak. Put extra merely, the scale of objects you’ll be able to construct is greater than triple that of the Mars 3.

You won’t assume a few additional inches would matter, however it makes all of the distinction on the planet. The printer got here in useful when my companion needed a prop for her Suzume costume. In this film, the primary character groups up with an animate kids’s chair (simply go together with it) with a very distinct look.

We thought of plenty 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 (in all probability 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 companion 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 in the long run, I used to be capable of make all of the components wanted for my companion’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 mild, projected by a digital show, to remedy solely the components of a pool of liquid resin which are essential for the print. And the display within the base of the Saturn 3 Ultra 12 has a very absurd degree of element.

The 12K on this printer’s full identify refers to precisely the identical factor it means in TVs. Your 4K TV has 4 thousand (roughly) strains of horizontal decision. Likewise, the LCD display 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 spectacular fashions I printed was this set of epaulets from the show The Orville.