I’m an enormous fan of resin 3D printers. Whereas the liquid resin generally is a little more durable to work with than typical filament printers, the outcomes are sometimes rather more detailed and look better. Nevertheless, there are some limitations to the Elegoo Mars 3 that I used up to now. Issues 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 typically as I’d like. The brand new Elegoo Saturn 3 Extremely, however, fixes all of those issues and extra.
What I like most about resin printing is that it allows me to be an even larger nerd. I’ve pals who play lots of D&D, and I prefer to make minifigs for them. Once I make costumes for Dragon Con, I discover it best to print lots of the equipment or particulars that I haven’t got the abilities to craft myself out of different supplies like foam. With the bigger print measurement and a greater filtering system, the Saturn 3 Extremely 12K made my goals of creating nerdy stuff a extra handy actuality.
Printing Area Galore
The largest benefit of the Elegoo Saturn 3 Extremely 12K in comparison with different comparable 3D printers is simply how a lot area it’s important to 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 adequate for printing D&D miniatures, small trinkets, or board recreation items. However it might get actually restrictive if you wish to do a lot that’s bigger than that.
{Photograph}: Eric Ravenscraft
The Saturn 3 Extremely, however, has a positively huge 218.88 mm × 122.88 mm × 260 mm construct quantity. Meaning 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 additional inches would matter, nevertheless it makes all of the distinction on this planet. The printer got here in helpful when my companion needed a prop for her Suzume costume. On this film, the primary character groups up with an animate kids’s chair (simply go along with it) with a very distinct look.
We thought-about various methods to recreate this character. We might construct it out of wooden (we had no woodworking instruments), we might make it out of froth (most likely the neatest choice, however we needed it to be sturdy sufficient to outlive a conference), or I might 3D-print some items and glue all of them collectively. However the Mars 3 solely had sufficient area to make a teeeeeny tiny model. And that’s not what my companion needed.
The Saturn 3 Extremely got here to the rescue. With just a little 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 entire print took about 14 lengthy hours–the bottom of the chair was stretching the boundaries of that tremendous tall print quantity–however ultimately, I used to be capable of make all of the elements 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.
{Photograph}: Eric Ravenscraft
Consideration to Element
Resin printers are so interesting as a result of they’ll recreate element that filament-based printers wrestle with. They use ultraviolet gentle, projected via a digital show, to remedy solely the elements of a pool of liquid resin which are crucial for the print. And the display within the base of the Saturn 3 Extremely 12 has a very absurd stage 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) strains of horizontal decision. Likewise, the LCD display within the Saturn 3 Extremely 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 Extremely could make some extremely intricate fashions. Elven castles and collectible figurines with advanced particulars like dragon scales are good for this system. However probably the most spectacular fashions I printed was this set of epaulets from the show The Orville.
