New toys arrived this month.

Some personal things mean that it's a pretty tough month of the year for me this month, so I was happy to see some things I ordered a few months ago unexpectedly arrived today!

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Both the Elegoo Saturn 4 Ultra and Mars 5 Ultra 3D printers I'd pre-ordered arrived this week.

There were so many quality of life updates detailed and the price is so good that I just had to replace my old Saturn 2 with a Saturn 4 Ultra. Unlike when I upgraded to the Mars 4 Ultra, my expectations were quiet high with this one, and luckily they've been mostly met so far!

The Mars, I didn't really need (I'd just upgraded to a Mars 4 Ultra last year) but with it having the same quality of life updates, I figured I might as well.

Really great first-impressions:

WIFI works great - remote sending/printing/watching, camera stream (it has a built in camera behind the bed). It's really handy being able to watch the print remotely. The whole API is open source to so I've begun to write some stuff for it,
No manual leveling! It auto-levels itself each print and does it's thing. The new tilt peel is great, too - I'm going to have to experiment with my layer settings. It also makes it the easier printer I've used. I literally just plugged it in, turned it on, poured in a vat of resin and then printed off three perfect prints in succession,
Some nice quality-of-life design elements. The drip tray is handy to stop getting resin in places it shouldn't go and the new plate secure-clip is much nicer than the old bolts,
The quality is jusy really nice. No layer lines and crisp details at a decent speed (I have it on high speed, but regular resin - I do have some Elegoo rapid to try out). I'd say the Mars 5 Ultra just about has the edge, but it's really, really hard to see a visual difference.
The Mars 5 Ultra is so, so quick in fast mode (with 0.1mm layer height). What took me 8-10 hours on my first 3D printer (an Anycubic Photon) takes around an hour or so on the Mars.

A few negatives for me as a long-term Elegoo user:

I had some teething issues with the Mars 5 Ultra. The version of chitubox I had didn't appear to like it and was making prints take 10-15 hours. It turned out to be a configuration thing, and installing the Chitubox that came with the printer fixed this,
On the Saturn 4 Ultra, the tilt peel is much louder than the old lift/raise method. I can hear the machine tilting away in here at the moment in the form of a periodic low rumble. I might try some foam padding under the machine's feet to see if I can stop the vibration of the motor travelling. This doesn't seem to be the case for the Mars 5 Ultra, so could well just be the machine size,
Resin collects in the print plate between the two layers which is a bit annoying to clean (and much more drippy, so glad for the drip-tray),
The new hinge lid on the Saturn 4 Ultra is annoying in that you can't have the printer almost-flat against a wall like the previous iterations. I now have an annoying 5cm gap around the back of the printer. Similarly, the Mars 5 Ultra not having the hinge lid feels a bit weird. I know, I know - I want it both ways.
Related to that last point, the Mars 5 Ultra needs more clearance to get the lid off, so I'm going to need to 'adjust' the unit that I built to house my printers - doh,
There's no sign of any of the 'AI' stuff yet. I have read some rumblings online that this is not ready yet (needs the printer to be sending image data to Elegoo for training).

Other than those small niggles, it's been great. With these features, I can't imagine not recommending these new printers to people as a good first-experience with 3D printing. I feel like they've really got it close to as simple as you can. The only real area I can think of that'd be great to see some advancements in is the cleanup process for when things go wrong (cured resin being stuck to the bottom of the VAT is still a pain to clean).

They're really progressing quite quickly with consumer 3D printing now - it's almost got to a point where I don't see a point in buying spares or replacement parts now - you might as well wait a year for the next iteration.

3D Resin Printing

Part of the '3D Resin Printing' series. Things I've learnt during the process of 3D Printing with resin

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Who I am

I'm Blake and I like to tinker with things and make stuff. When I'm not programming or developing random systems, I'm playing with electronics, doodling bits of art, 3D modelling or sculpting and painting things or nerding out watching sci-fi or horror TV.

From 2001 I worked in the games industry, eventually specialising in tools to aid in the development of video games and their engines. In 2011 I left the industry and teamed up with a few other talented composers to utilise my knowledge to help build the company 'Spitfire Audio'.

I also periodically compose soundtracks for video-games and have worked on titles such as The Stanley Parable and Portal Knights. You've probably also heard my music in random TV commercials at some point.

What I'm using to create

I use various bits and bobs to craft my shiz.

Elegoo Saturn 4 Ultra, Mars 5 Ultra, Mars 4 Ultra,
3x Mars 3 Pro backup printers for speed,
Elegoo ABS-like Resin 3.0,
Sunla Water-washable grey,
Elegoo Resin Space Grey 8k,
Phrozen Luna curing station,
Vallejo Model Color, Game Air, various sets,
Iwata Eclipse HP-CS & Studio Smart Jet Pro Compressor,
Random cheapo airbrushes for base coats,
3D Studio Max, ZBrush and Chitubox Pro.