Okay, now we can get started! Elegoo have really become known for their
resin printers recently - but originally, they’ve been doing robotics and Arduino
stuff. And that shows. In a good way. Today we’re going to take a look at their
Mars lineup, specifically, the Mars, the Mars Pro and the Mars 2 Pro. They’ve also got a cost-down Mars-C, and
in the future, apparently there will also be a Mars 2 non-Pro. But these 3 models are arguably the most popular
ones they offer, so what I wanted to find out is what the differences between these
printers are in practice and whether the extra cost is actually worth it for the Mars Pro
and Mars 2 Pro. Let’s get going. By telling you about the sponsor of today’s
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again, thanks Surfshark for sponsoring this video. Alright, these printers look very similar
- that’s because they are. The devil is in the details, though. They are all LCD-based resin printers, all
at a very similar print size, resolution and speed, yes; they all run on the Chitu platform,
which means you get to use the ChituBox slicer with premade profiles, and the printers themselves
are using the Electronics kit from Chitu. That actually means they are incredibly similar
to basically any other printer that also uses the Chitu ecosystem, which is, most of them,
actually, like the Anycubic Photon, Phrozen Sonic Mini or Creality LD-002R. Great job on that name, Creality! Each one of these printers from Elegoo is
a basic, but really good machine in practice. Print quality on each one is great, as you
would expect from a resin printer. There are marginal differences, which we will
get to in a second. None of them have any fancy features like
a tilting bed or wifi connectivity or resin level sensors, these are really just basic,
bare-bones workhorses. The odd one out is actually not the Mars 2
Pro, but the original Mars. It uses an older version of the Chitu mainboard,
that actually has a full Ethernet port onboard that is disabled, but apparently, you can
reflash a few things and actually get that to work; the Mars also uses a very simple
reflector-style LED assembly that supposedly isn’t curing parts very evenly - I tested
that, and it has a different Z-axis assembly, which uses little roller wheels instead on
this track instead of the linear rails that the Mars Pro and Mars 2 Pro use. The resin VATs are compatible between all
these printers, as are the build plates with the excellent ball head adjustment mechanism,
but the one on the Mars 2 Pro is slightly larger because it has a slightly larger build
area, too. They went from a textured, anodized surface
on the Mars to a grooved finish on the Mars Pro back to a textured surface on the Mars
2 Pro. The two “Pro” models also have an activated
carbon filter built-in, which does somewhat reduce the printing smell, but these filters
do get used up quicker than you might think, and I was not able to find where you would
buy replacements. So once you use up the filter that comes with
the printer, you’re left with essentially a printer that now actively blows unfiltered
air into your room. But it looks like you can buy the same filter
unit as a standalone device and retrofit it onto any resin printer, so, eh? The real differences are in the core of the
printing system, the LCD and the UV LED. The Mars and Mars Pro use an off-the shelf
LCD, complete with the RGB color filter. Because the printers are only using near-UV
light, you only get the blue sub-pixels to actually transmit light, while the red and
green ones always block the UV light, even when you actually want to expose that pixel. The Mars 2 Pro now uses an LCD without the
color filter, so in practice, it can let 3 times as much light pass through to expose
the resin. And that reflects in the curing times per
layer - the Mars 2 Pro takes around 2 or 2.5 seconds per layer to expose it, while the
Mars and Mars Pro take around 7 or 8 seconds. But that doesn’t mean that your prints are
actually going to finish 3 times as fast, too, because the Mars 2 Pro actually spends
the majority of its printing time moving the platform up and down to release each layer
from the FEP film above the LCD and to let new resin flow in. Which means, in practice, the Mars 2 Pro is
about 30% faster, not 300%. For small parts, you can actually save a significant
amount of time by reducing the distance the bed moves up and down for each layer - but
saves the same absolute amount of time for each printer and may come with some side effects. However, the monochromatic screen should also
last longer because it is still only being hit by UV light 1/3rd as long as the others,
but it also absorbs less of the light, which means less heat generated. These screens are considered a consumable
- it’s hard to find any real durability numbers, but the consensus seems to be anywhere
between 1,000 and 10,000 hours, and probably a good bit longer for the Mars 2 Pro. The replacement screens for the Mars and Mars
Pro are a bit over 20 bucks, while the panel for the Mars 2 Pro is a bit over 50 bucks. They’re a bit hard to find, so I put a link
to the panel in the description below. The screens for the Mars and Mars Pro include
an extra layer of tempered glass - basically a screen protector, while on the Mars 2 Pro,
you’re using the LCD panel directly with no extra protective layer - so be careful
with it. The other difference between the Mars, Mars
Pro and Mars 2 Pro is the actual UV LED. The Mars uses a single LED and a very simple
reflector, the Mars Pro uses an LED array with tiny individual lenses for each LED,
and finally the Mars 2 Pro is back to a single LED, but this time using a lens and an increased
distance from the screen to the LED to make for a more even exposure. It’s kind of interesting, on the Mars 2
Pro it looks like the LED is actually mounted directly on the bottom of the frame. I ran a test to try and find out how evenly
these printers expose the build area, and while there were some slight differences between
the printers these little test ribs should all have been 2.85mm, but I would say those
differences are general overcuring on the whole printer, but not so much a difference
in exposure between the center and the edges of the build area. So, how is print quality? As expected, prints look amazing, they always
do for resin printers. For all three printers, there’s tons of
detail and texture and you’d be hard-pressed to notice the physical resolution of the LCD
and the layer height - the pixel size on each of these printers is about 50µm, which is
also what the layer height was set to. You can go lower with the layer height, but
the LCD resolution is fixed. Or is it? As we zoom in, you can start to see a very
noticeable difference in how smooth the edges of each layer contour is - the Mars and Mars
2 Pro have a visibly blocky look to them where you can see each pixel, basically. The Mars 1 Pro, however, has extremely smooth
edges and basically, all you can see is the layers themself. By the way, these details are microscopic
- here’s a USB plug for scale! For the Mars 1, that’s relatively easy to
explain - it has antialising turned off by default in ChituBox, so it has no chance of
smoothing out those edges. The Mars Pro and Mars 2 Pro both have antialiasing
turned on, but it looks like it’s doing a much better job on the Mars Pro than on
the Mars 2 Pro. The top surfaces also look a good bit smoother
on the Mars Pro, and all this combined leads me to believe that there could be an issue
simply with the Mars and Mars 2 Pro maybe underexposing a bit. But this is complaining on a very high level
- and you can always tweak the print settings if you want to. I also tried to print a part that falls more
into the “mechanical” category, that is this C-mount to M12 lens adapter, this lets
me use these little security camera lenses on this camera body, and the adapter, on the
outside, is a 1” 32TPI thread, on the inside, an M12x0.5 thread, both of which are pretty
fine threads. Interestingly, only the print from the Mars
Pro kinda worked - the 1” thread did fit well, but none of the printers managed to
create a working M12x0.5 thread. I know printing a thread this fine is a really
tough job, but I also tried the same part on the Prusa SL1 and that fit perfectly with
default slicer settings and no tweaking. Ok, the M12 thread is still a bit tight, but
it works. And I’m confident that the Mars printers
are also capable of printing this part, you just maybe have give it a few tries and tweak
exposure and antialiasing settings a bit. Elegoo do provide a very helpful spreadsheet
with recommended exposure settings for all their resins and printers as a starting point. If we take a peek under the hood, sometimes
we find some fairly frightful displays of cable-mismanagement and dangerous electronics
choices. Thankfully, all the Elegoo Mars printers are
built impeccably. They have real CE with the proper documentation
and the power supply is even, verifiably so, TÜV GS tested and deemed safe. Like I said, it shows that Elegoo have some
experience under their belt from robotics kits. So which printer would I choose? Well, here’s the thing. I don’t know how much of a difference the
monochromatic vs. RGB screens make in the longevity of the screen itself, which would
be a factor if I was set up for resin printing and had a Mars running around the clock. I really like the fact that the Mars Pro provides
the smoothest and most accurate prints out of the box, and the print speed increase of
the Mars 2 Pro, in real use, isn’t actually all that big. I think all of these printers actually print
fast enough for casual use - you still need to then spend the time on post-processing,
that is washing and curing the parts anyways. The Mars 2 Pro does offer a larger print area,
but if I really wanted to print larger resin parts, there’s still the Saturn, which actually
isn’t all that expensive, either. When I
wrote the script for this video, the Mars Pro was actually about 10 bucks cheaper than
the basic Mars and 70 bucks cheaper than the Mars 2 Pro, so I would definitely go for the
Mars Pro. But if you have different requirements, any
of these printers is going to be a solid choice for you. In either case, you should definitely also
look into getting a cleaning and curing station that works with your printer - Elegoo conveniently
make the Mercury, which lets you wash the print still attached to the platform. That’s so much cleaner than trying to jostle
the resin-covered print into a fryer bucket to wash it in isopropyl alcohol. The cleaning station, I think, pushes the
Mars series of printers from being “very okay, but incomplete”, into “very much
recommended” territory. You know what else I can recommend? Joining my Patreon alongside these legends! We do Q’n’A hangouts roughly once a month
and your support on Patreon helps me keep this channel independent. Thank you all for your support and thanks
for watching! You can find links to the all of the Marsens,
the Mercury cleaning station as well as for the replacement screens in the description. Keep on making, and I’ll see you in the
next one.
