Man… It is insane!
THIS was 3D printed in resin, on the new Elegoo Mars 3,
and this...
...and this,
and this!
...and this.
The Mars 3 has 30% higher resolution than similar LCD printers.
Does it make any difference?
Yeah, it does!
If you don’t have a 3D Printer yet, this is a good moment!
There is much competition and prices just plummeted!
I have a few great printers to review
and today we are looking at the Mars 3,
that Elegoo was kind to send me.
To be clear: this video is NOT sponsored!
Smaller pixels change everything, I’ll show you!
But first let’s unbox it:
No! No! No!
Not like this!
Gee…
The paper manual should guide you through your first test print
and the basic settings of the Chitubox slicer.
Then you have a small box with essential tools:
in my case, the zip bag was open
and there were screws all over the place
well, extra screws…
the printer comes fully assembled.
Everything comes super well protected.
The Mars 3 is quite unique:
it is very compact and all rounded
most printers are very boxy.
Even so, the build plate is a bit bigger
than the previous Mars series,
so you can print bigger models!
If you are new to resin printers,
you pour resin on a vat
and the resin is hardened by ultra violet light
that comes from the bottom:
so the resin tank has a thin
transparent plastic FEP film
this is the material that Dupont trademarked as “Teflon” in 1945
On the Mars 3, the UV light is shaped by a 4k LCD:
it is a crazy number of pixels on a small printer,
and that’s the biggest advantage of the Mars 3:
the 35 microns resolution.
The printer is lightweight,
excellent finish,
the stepper motor might be quite strong:
the threaded-rod is hard to spin.
There is no noticeable backlash or play anywhere,
it feels very tight!
The red Cover protects the uncured resin from external UV light…
So rounded...
...custom and beautiful!
...right, the tools!
It comes with a pair of gloves
Power cable,
Power adapter,
a few Filtering Paper Funnels,
a Metal Scrapper: you will use it so much…
A Plastic Scrapper that you should NOT use
Backup Screws and Hex keys,
Two face masks,
Cutter Pliers, that you will use a lot to remove supports!
…another lost screw…
…and a USB Flash Drive
And that’s all!
Let’s print something!
I watched a LOT of videos before,
but this was my very first personal experience with a Resin Printer,
so I followed the instructions to level the build plate,
find the ideal pressure on the paper,
not too strong, not too lose…
set the Z to zero…
check that the LCD and the UV lights were working,
poured resin on the tank,
there were NO leaks…
fixing the tank
and printing the Rooks test…
This is so different from the traditional plastic filament 3D printers:
you have NO IDEA of what’s going on…
and indeed: when it was over,
I had nothing on the plate!
I emptied the VAT and there they were:
This!
I cleaned the build plate,
re-leveled, and tried again:
this time I got perfect towers!
But that is just part of the process.
If you don’t clean and cure them properly,
instead of this beauty,
you get this lemon
yeah, all gooey.
Elegoo has a new Mercury X bundle with two stations:
one for cleaning
and one for curing
with digital timers.
I’ll make a separate video about them,
but, really, if you are into Resin Printing,
I cannot recommend them enough!
it will make your life so much easier!
I said the Mars 3 has higher resolution, what does it mean?
3 things:
1st: There are details you cannot not print using other printers
2nd: There is something on the Mars 3 that will affect all your models
And Some Resins won’t get you the same level of details
So, lets begin with the AmeraLabs Town test #9
On the Chitubox slicer you can see the squares and circles
going from small to super-tiny.
If you slice it for the Mars 3,
here in the middle, squares are still squares,
circles are still circles…
and there will be something to be printed even on this edge.
Now, if you slice it for the Mars 2,
here in the middle everything already looks like a square.
And here, the printer doesn’t even have a chance!
There will be nothing in the file to be printed.
“- Oh But the AmeraLabs Town is a benchmark model!
No real model will benefit from a couple of extra pixels!”
Do you print miniatures?
Check this out:
I took the Fillenium Malcon model to Chitubox,
yeah, it’s big!
And scaled it to 25%,
that’s a super small nice gift.
If I sliced it for the Mars 2
and, pay attention to the Access Bays:
in one of the sides, the details were so small,
smaller than a single pixel!
So in the end, the Access Bays on that side get completely flat.
But then I sliced it for the Mars 3,
pay attention to the Access Bays:
there are details on both sides.
On the this side they are 2 pixels tall,
on the other side just 1 pixel…
but it is there!
I printed it and here you have: details on both sides.
The difference was 1 pixel!
The point here is:
smaller pixels can show smaller details.
Now, I will show you something that a few YouTubers already noticed
I will call it “The Minecraft Effect”.
This Rook looks gorgeous,
but it was printed at 50 microns.
Pay attention at the light reflection here:
Shiny... Matte...
Shiny... Dull.
It is weird because it looks
as if this part was made of different materials:
this side it looks like plastic,
but here it almost looks like if it was velvet coated.
A smooth surface is consistent in how it reflects light.
And indeed, with much smaller pixels,
this Rook printed at 35 microns has much less “Minecraft Effect”
reflections look "right", all around.
At 50 microns,
gray resins look a bit like frosted glass
or fine sandblasted:
the light is diffused…
reflections are scattered.
It is quite nice,
but it also softens your perception of details.
Look: with a bunch of light, the difference is subtle.
But when lights are further away, reflections are quite different.
And here you clearly see how this curve in the helmet looks sharper.
Although, and this might not be what you expect,
such smoother surface looks more like plastic,
and any scratch that the pice suffers
gets much more clearly visible later on.
I see many people trying to see the difference
of quality of the Mars 3 using Grey Resins.
This might not be ideal!
When I printed using an ABS-Like Gray, not from Elegoo,
Well, it looked great!
But gray resins seems to be thicker and “powdery”:
it was more difficult to print the super thin lines and details,
and at the same time,
it was more prone to fill and clog small grooves and channels.
When I used the Elegoo Plant-Based Black,
it was so much easier to get all the details:
the tiniest lines were printed
and the small grooves were dry, crystal sharp!
So, each Resin type and color is different!
You should test each resin you have
to find the ideal exposure
and also to discover how much detail
and sharpness you can expect from each one.
The Mars 3 is fast,
good build volume,
really high-resolution!
It is a bit more expensive
but still a fair price!
If you are beginning with Resin 3D Printing,
this is an excellent start!
I will make a separate video
just about Anti-Aliasing on the Mars 3,
but I will post it on a new channel I am making just about 3D Printing.
And Elegoo just announced they will also
make a DLP version of the Mars 3!
Ho ho! My goodness!
And stay tuned for my review of the Voxelab Proxima 2K
and the Lotmaxx Shark V2.
Subscribe and I’ll see you soon!