Elegoo Saturn 3 Review - 12k PRINTING - DONE RIGHT!

I'm genuinely happy to find that someone's finally taking 12K seriously no joke I wasn't expecting much from this unit based on my previous experience with 12K printers but the results speak for themselves this is the sharpest 3D printer I've ever used and I even have the evidence to back it up too put it this way the results here are going to make my future comparison video against its competitors very very easy so hi I'm Ross and this is Pho Hammer videos now don't get me wrong and don't get too excited there's very little to make me go wow with this printer but only because I've had so many elegue printers prior to it there's just so much here that's the same as what has come before there's very few enhancements and that's fine because this printer is neither marketed nor priced as a top tier printer don't expect any bells and whistles no Advanced features and you'll be the opposite of disappointed I guess that means you'll be appointed but that same point of lacking Innovation at actually has a silver lining because what elegu have done here is refine what worked before the Saturn 3 is quite obviously the direct successor to the Saturn II with its main calling card being an upgraded display which is now kinda 12K unlike the previous generations 8K and I say kinda because its resolution is 11 560 by 5120 it is a 16x9 screen and for anyone who has used a screen size calculator you may notice that the pixels on the y-axis are too few for this resolution this is because for some technical reason that's beyond me the pixels in this display are rectangles not squares whilst pixels and LCDs are typically Square it's not uncommon that pixels in some displays don't have a one-to-one ratio I've seen a lot of comments on previous videos suggesting this may cause some kind of problem but the truth is it really won't but this does inform what has been the most directly comparable metric between printers quality and that's the pixel size on the x-axis this is only 19 microns but even if you wanted to print the thinnest smallest very smooth wall that this was capable of the y-axis is still 24 microns so the best this printer is capable of rendering is determined by its weakest value so no matter which way you slice it this is a 24 Micron printer but as this generation of printers is quickly shown resolution is not everything when it comes to determining a printer's sharpness because there's a chamber below the screen with a light source when that light travels through the screen it doesn't travel straight up and towards the build plate it travels outwards too which causes LCD bloat not having so much of this is the biggest benefit of DLP printers like the Mars 4 DLP but they're limited by pixel resolution and print size and on competing printers that issue is very apparent and you can't solve it unless the printer has a method of directing that light in more of a specific and right direction which this does with a funeral lens just like the Saturn II before it and the result of this well I'll get on to that but it's good it's it's really good let me get through the required parts of the review and we'll talk about it because there's some important functional stuff to cover first so unboxing is good because you can slide it out of the box whilst allowing it to remain upright thumbs up on that one elagu looks wise it's pretty much the same as the Saturn II it's almost identical and it's got smooth plastic but angled housing though it's odd that they've done away with the tacky style decals that they used on the Mars 4 DLP and the max I guess all of you realized that they were fairly pointless additions it's got dual linear rails and a really solid c-frame which now encloses the Z rail arm the zedrail itself initially appeared to go all the way up to the top but it's not secured at the top of the frame which may lead to some Zed wobble judder though I've seen little evidence of this in its early days it just would have been nice to have a bearing up here securing this in at both ends but elegu are typically the more cost efficient brand and on that cost saving front the vat the vat's quite low and quite narrow I've seen bigger Vats on printers this size which allows for more resin to fit in for a larger print and because it's so narrow and compact within the case resin will often drip and be attracted to the static of the plastic housing and run down the inside of it it's just messy at first but eventually leads to Dripping under the rim and sticking the lid to the base until you either cure it or scrape it off with a knife the printer comes with its usual Affair of extra kit like Allen Keys extra bolts filters gloves scrapers and a cheap USB drive I always warn people these are cheap and should be replaced ASAP before they fail and up a printer oddly though and it's a small thing I need to call out and give thumbs up to the scraper in here though which is pretty nice it's quite sharp and has a comfortable rubber handle so this is now replaced by outdated one back to cost saving though once again the USB port is on the side and at the back this bothers me I've said it in many videos I'd prefer it on the front so I can put other devices right up close to the sides it won't block the fan because the Fan's on the bottom but despite this the printer is pretty quiet it's been just a meter and a half behind me at work all week and the fan noise has never bothered me once the fan also shuts off when the printer's not printing it was constantly on whilst the printer was on in the last generation and like all elegu printers now it comes with an activated carbon filter which is powered from the USB port inside the case I haven't noticed any smells from this printer at all once these are enabled and the lid also comes with a vent hole if you want to connect this up to an extractor or the upcoming Mars mate which is a printer-sized carbon filter system and I'll be reviewing that as soon as I get my hands on with one so make sure you click subscribe and the notification Bell so that you don't miss it and it's also worth noting that this printer comes with lrf support which is much better than the directly competing brand who only use LPL when it comes to the UI though it's fine it works but it's just starting to look a little bit outdated and pretty cheap when compared to other printers I know it's the tiniest of quirks but is it really that much effort to spruce up the UI a little it it makes the whole printer just look cheap what really matters though is printing and when it comes to printing this printer comes with a lifetime activation code for Tango slicer or so it seems I've actually learned more about this since my previous reviews and this is an elegue specific cut of Tango based on Tango version 2. annoyingly though when I open this app now it asks me to auto update which I did to version 4 but with that version I was completely unable to sign in until I downgraded to version 2 again restarted my PC then the app then unticked Auto sign in and restart it again the more I use the Le gu version of this app the less I like it mainly due to to its cumbersome movement controls but when I reached out to Vauxhall dance to resolve the earlier sign-in issue they've since provided me with a free license for the full application to try out which has some very detailed Auto support settings specifically for Miniatures but I'll cover more on that in a future video about that slicer but I did have what's quite a huge issue with this slicer though though it may not be the slicer it may be inherently with the new DOT goo format I sliced up a pre-supported sephiroth model from Nom Nom Studios and I exported it directly to the included USB drive whilst that was printing I sliced up two other parts of that print and saved them directly to my PC when the first print was complete I tried to move those files from my PC to the SD card but these dot goo files from Tango were nearly 5 gigabytes each so here's some PC tech info for you first of all the USB drive that they give you with this is only 4 gig but even if you try to use a larger one one and I've recommended replacing them anyway the problem is that these are formatted in the FAT32 format which only allows you to transfer files which are four gig in size and I did try formatting that larger Drive in x-fat which does allow for bigger files but when printing with this the Saturn 3 failed to print with a memory error at about 70 complete yay wasted resin so at this point I had no choice but to just put fewer things on the print bed which severely limited me from using anywhere near the full volume of the printer oh which I should have mentioned earlier is near enough 219 by 123 by 250 millimeters this is the same height as the Saturn II and it's five centimeters taller than this printer's direct 12K competitor anyway I later sliced up for Big Boss heads which I'm using to practice painting skin techniques I sent these straight to the USB drive little did I know because there were no errors the actual file was once again too big for the drive but the slicer wrote as much as it could and presented me with what looked like a complete dot goo file on the drive it was only when I came to print this that it once again failed halfway through with the same memory error on the screen because the file itself had been truncated by the maximum capacity of the drive so instead I sliced the same four models in chittu box which exported a DOT CTB file the older format and this was only 600 megabytes so I have no idea if this is a tango thing or a DOT goo format thing but be careful because this could easily trap you if you try and slice and save straight to the USB drive like I did but until I figure out more on this I'm just gonna stick with slicing in chitu box thanks now when it comes to print quality I first want to have a quick go at Nom Nom because these models are amazing but the supports are atrocious yeah these guarantee more printing success but the model is filled with tons of tiny little bubbles everywhere many of which can't be easily cleaned without damage so so sort this out guys like you make Ace models but this is almost as bad as loot Studio supports maybe maybe drop Atlas 3D online yeah anyway as for the printer's print quality well if you've watched my earlier videos you'll have seen me print the same exposure test time and time again and I suggest watching my beginner setup guide for guidance on how to set up any printer perfectly and quickly using that test now this test will show us how to dial in Perfect Exposure by matching the number of holes with the number of posts but perfect isn't always the best exposure for prints again watch that other video for details but what this is is simple quick and most importantly measurable all other tests will give you an inference of how certain details will print but all we're interested in knowing is does this 12K resolution give us better print X Y accuracy than other printers well I've said in many previous videos I've never managed to print this test with more than 13 posts and 13 holes equally until now and just before I show you this print I'd like to remind you that it really helps us if you're considering buying this printer or any printer we review or even anything from any of those brand stores or any of the affiliate Partners we have if you click on our links in the description before you make a purchase we get a commission at no cost to you so thank you that's a great way of supporting us it's also how I can keep making these videos for you so please have a look at our links and if you're shopping in any of those places give them a little click then come back and watch the rest of the video so as I said on this printer I was able to print 14 posts and 14 holes but you can only just see it please bear in mind that this 14th post has a diameter of just 100 microns that's only slightly wider than a human hair at 70 microns to have an idea of how thin that is just pull a hair out of your head now and don't look at the root side but try to look down the length of it from a end do you see how small that is this printer can print it so long as you are using a very sharp resin now as always I'm using the Frozen 8K resin here but mainly because eligue didn't send me any of their 8K resin which is pretty similar but a little bit more flexible but having seen thousands of comments on my videos most people don't use these high detail resins anyway they're usually too expensive for one except maybe Saray attacks fast Navy gray which is a decent price but they're typically much more brittle resins I certainly don't use them for practical Miniatures and I really need to tell you quickly about this device I used which is the tomlov dm-202 the guys from Shopify contacted me while I was doing my Saturn 3 review and said if we send you one of these will you do a video and I was kind of like nobody on my channel is going to care about this thing I'm not going to sell you any of them and I don't want to do a video that's just going to waste your product and my time but I did have a use for it which we've seen here and I'm going to be using it a lot more going forward so if you're after a digital microscope that's got a monitor attached yeah brilliant and the good thing is as you've seen I can connect it up directly to my video recorder so that you can get direct footage from the device great so thanks for sending me this guys and I'll pop a product link Down Below in the description if it's something you fancy checking out because for what it is it's pretty cheap so yes this printer is capable of some of the tiniest detail rendering I've seen yet but the difference is minuscule again I can't stress enough that yeah the printer can do it but it really depends on what resin you're using with it so have that in mind when you're considering buying your next printer if you're using soft and cheap stuff you won't get the most out of this printer but it's still worth knowing that the printer is capable of it so should you buy this printer well if you've got a satin 2 or an equivalent already I probably wouldn't rush to upgrade on actual models I strongly doubt you'd even see a difference but if you are in the market for a new printer and this is around your budget it's easily the sharpest 12K printer out there at the time of recording this video and whilst most people won't see a difference in a 10 inch 12K printer over the same size 8K printer I'm sure you like me would be happier knowing you bought a printer that can do this even though you probably don't need it rather than a printer where you may one day want it but the printer just can't do it now please bear in mind I'm also going to be reviewing the Saturn 3 Ultra along with the upcoming new Mars printers too and I do have some concerns regarding the Saturn 3 due to its inclusion of ACF film which I've previously shown on other reviews helps with speed but reduces print quality so let's see what the Saturn 3 Ultra is like when we get our hands on one don't forget to subscribe and hit the notification Bell so you don't miss that video I want to say thanks for watching and thanks to all of our wonderful patrons for supporting the Channel please consider getting your name up in lights like the rest of them by supporting us there or you can just drop us a tip in the form of a super thanks that's the heart button with the little dollar sign in it and also don't forget about our affiliate links which again that's no cost to you very little effort and it really helps us out in supporting the channel it's all greatly appreciated and it helps us keep the lights on and it keeps us making these videos so until next time be excellent to each other foe hammer out foreign thank you [Music]

Channel: FauxHammer

Views: 61,098

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Id: V1Wy_TggG8s

Length: 15min 58sec (958 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 25 2023