Elegoo Saturn 3 Vs Saturn 3 Ultra - WATCH Before you Buy

I'm going to assume if you're watching this video then you're wondering whether you'll be happy enough with the Saturn 3 or whether the ultra is worth the extra outlay so let me make this as simple as I can for you and show you the Practical benefits you'll get for your extra cash spec sheets are great and all but what does that actually mean in terms of tangible value well I'm glad you asked so hi I'm Ross and this is faux Hammer videos I do love doing these comparison videos because they're usually the most helpful to people you've probably been looking at printers for a while now and have settled on this brand and model then you've realized there's two versions of it if you've dug deeper you may even know that the ultra will not necessarily give you better print quality because it uses a frosted ACF film rather than a clear and sharp nfap but hang on because not is all it seems with these printers at least not when compared to the other 12K printers that also use ACF specifically about the printers that we know about when this video is released not the ones that may or may not get released after so then the satin 3 the one with the red lid is the satin 3 and the one with the black lid is the ultra and that one also comes with a metal based chassis 2 this has no immediate benefit to you but it does look a bit nicer though there are some more differences while the satin 3 has the power socket neatly on the back with the USB port on the side near the back the ultra has moved these ports along with Wi-Fi to the side though at least now the USB port is towards the front but not that you ever actually need it on the ultra by the way if you haven't noticed already the point of this video is just to be a quick Whistle Stop tour giving you the differences between these printers if you want to know more I do recommend you check out our individual review videos for each just a cement that you've picked the right one and these videos are linked down in the description below both of these are 10-in 12K printers and it's important to know if you don't already that 12K is only relevant to the screen size of the printer it specifically means that this screen has an approximate 12,000 pixels on the X or the Y AIS that's all it doesn't mean that it's immediately better quality than all 9k 8K or other K printers in this case specifically it means that the LCD screens have 11,520 pixels on the x-axis that's left to right as you look at it but despite the aspect ratio of this screen being 16x9 it only has 5,120 pixels on the Y AIS and that's front to back if you know how to calculate screen sizes and pixels then you'll know that that's lower than the 6480 you'd expect on this size of display and that's because the pixels in this display are rectangular where most other printer displays have square pixels this doesn't cause any issues each layer of your print will still render using the right amount of pixels for that image but to keep things simple we can only measure this display by its weakest value and that's the the Y AIS is 24 Micron pixels where on the x-axis the pixels are only 19 microns so when comparing these printers to others ignore the 12K completely ignore it and look at pixel size yes you can look at PPI as well but we don't we've just adopted pixel size as the main unit of measure for printers smaller is better so compare those printers pixel sizes to the 24 microns on this one but this generation of printers has confusingly proven that this single measure of detail isn't everything things like the type of light reflecting lenses inside the printers and the type of release film used also bear significant weight on the quality of your printed models but I'll come back to that so we've talked about the screen size and this also tells us the build area which is 219 by 123 mm but when we talk about build volume that also takes into account the extra height and this is where the satin 3 Ultra wins thanks to its extra 10 mm so you can print slightly taller things and this extra space is thanks to the sattin 3 having a different leveling mechanism to the ultra on the satin 3 their mechanism is the typical two-point ball head that elu have used on pretty much all of their printers I've said many times in the past that I do have more issues with these coming loose after long prints and they need to be releveled more frequently but despite many commenters arguing against this it seems ELO agree since they've also included the much preferred 4o bolt mechanism on their more premium printer the ultra in any case though the leveling process is pretty much the same just unscrew whatever bolts you have send the bed to home hold down on the plate whilst tightening the bolts and for the sake of the ultra do alternating Corners then just back out of the menu and press Z equals 0 to tell the printer that this is the absolute zero position as a reference for all future prints just a quick reminder though if you do buy one of these printers it really helps helps us out if you click our affiliate links in the description before you buy there's no cost to you but we'll make a commission the most important thing though is that it shows elegu how valuable our reviews are and it encourages them to keep sending us printers so we can help you more in the future so what else is different between these models one of the main things is the screw for the Z AIS whilst both have dual linear rails the satin has a basic lead screw where the ultra has a much thicker and more stable ball screw the benefit to you is that the bed is much more stable leading to fewer print defects like layer shifts and that is incredibly important to the ultra due to its faster speed and speaking of speed the ultra feels the need now It's tricky to put a relative benefit to you on this speed is an odd thing to compare at the moment because it relies on so many variables such as the resin and release film you use I'll come back to the release film in a moment but when you look at the spec of these printers it says that the printing speed of the satin 3 is 70 mm an hour and the ultra is 150 mm an hour but the thing is print speed rather than just bed lift speed is such a weird metric to compare what layer height is this for example and what resin's being used what's the cost because I've seen so many times that prints from a dedicated fast resin looks terrible when compared to standard resins printed at standard speeds it would just be far better to know the maximum movement speed of the bed because I set my ultra to 900 mm a minute in the slicer and when I sliced it told me that the print would take about an hour this is obviously beyond the motor's capability because the printer told me it' be 4 hours and for reference that was at 30 Micron layers So based on the rough guesstimate that I would say that the max speed of the ultra is around 250 mm a minute but that's really a guess neither are the fastest moving printers on the market but they're close enough but that's a good thing because faster speeds frequently offer little more than worst quality models but heho I get it some of you out there want fast printers based on the spec alone the ultra is slightly more than twice as fast as the satin 3 however as I said you need more than just a fast printer to print models fast supporting the speed is a new type of release film that comes as standard with the ultra ACF is a frosted film which allows prints to release up to 30% easier than clear PFA release film that you get on the Saturn and there are a couple of things you really need to be aware of with ACF first is that its performance benefit is directly relative to the speed of your preferred resin can print at more detailed resins are typically harder and more brittle due to their properties you want lift speeds of around 60 mm a minute on traditional and clear PFA release films with ACF you get a 30% speed boost so it goes from 60 to around 80 mm a minute that's not a significant Improvement but for hardier resins many of these have more durability and you can already lift at higher speeds on PFA So the faster you can lift on PFA the more of a speed benefit you get from ACF now in my own testing I used my own War gamer resin and I was able to max out the speed on the satin 3 Ultra and still get a very successful large print though I would probably slow it down a good way if I was printing miniatures just to ensure the ultra fine supports don't tear during a print but the other thing you need to be aware of with ACF is that because of the Frosted surface it does reduce print quality now results May Vary on this because my first experience with ACF was on the Hallet Mage Pro which well just watched the review to see what I thought about that one I then got it on the ne cubic m5s where it significantly diminish the quality and I've also tested this on ELO's own Mars 4 ultra and again you can see a quality drop but for no reason that I can now explain on the Saturn 3 Ultra the quality difference is minimal to the point of almost imperceivable in fact because of this diffusion the ACF creates it also helps to hide layer and voxal lines on your prints giving a more consistent though very mly textured in a matway surface now in my satin 3 Ultra video I originally hypothesized Iz that this was due to the new special Light Source on that printer the satin 3 is already using a fral lens which basically directs UV light in more of a straight line towards the build plate rather than outward which causes LCD blow pral lenses help LCD printers operate much more like DLP printers and those ones are insanely sharp and more accurate but they're really small and have very large pixels the satin 3 Ultra however uses what eligo are calling a refractive light source yeah I mean a fral lens is a type of refractor anyway so I'm guessing this is just a very specially engineered light source made specifically for this printer but anyway I initially expected that this special lens is what makes ACF look good on the satin 3 where it looks terrible on other printers in the past my experience has clearly shown that it heavily softens edges whilst causing weird cross-hatch Grain on every surface so to validate this I decided to put the ACF VAT on my sattin 3 and that printer's PFA VAT on my ultra the expectation of course was that without the special lens the satin 3 would be heavily Overexposed due to the ACF film and the ultra would be significantly sharper but no prints from the satin 3 with ACF look just like prints on the ultra with ACF and prints with the PFA on the ultra just look like they do on the satin 3 with PFA so the Special ultra lens isn't doing anything significant here and this is why I say your results May Vary with ACF perhaps there's a lottery of success when you buy this stuff Sometimes good sometimes bad maybe it's a different brand that elu of used here I just don't know but whatever the ACF film is on the ultra has completely changed my opinion of this stuff but I'm honestly I'm genuinely scared that if and when I do replace this specific sheet I'll not be able to get something this successful again so I have reached out to eligo to ask what the difference is so look ACF it's still new and we're still learning it but as of right now all I can genuinely say is that the satin 3 Ultra has finally realized what ACF originally promised comparable quality at faster print speeds and that isn't all when it comes to the differences in these printers the ultra still has significant L more to offer the first of those is the Wi-Fi function this is super easy to set up just connect it to your network in the printer's UI and once you have your slicer I use chit box will find the printer on your home network so you can send prints remotely and start them remotely too so on the ultra there's no need to use the terrible quality USB drives that you get with these printers and speaking of that UI it is completely different between printers the satin 3 is very basic and is elegu very standard approach it does the job and it does it fine but it's really looking its age now and has for a couple of years the ultra though is so much more in depth with a full HD display much deeper menus all the same functions are there though with manual movement of the bed on the ultra now allowing 50 mm increments where the basic is limited to 10 m increments I mean it's a minor convenience thing but it's there also with the ultra you have the ability ility to adjust settings mid print if you get print fails you may just start again but let's say you're dialing in your exposure speed or something like your settings while the base layers are curing you have enough time to just quickly change the normal layer exposure time the lift and retract speed whatever you like and that saves you constantly going back to your slicer on your computer just to tweak it to print another test and also while both printers come with an abundance of extras in the box like scrapers gloves paper funnels and cheap USB drives and other gobbins the best feature is ELO's integrated carbon filter and whilst each printer only comes with one device in the Box the satin 3 Ultra has space in the chassis for two but you will need to purchase that extra one separately but that is pretty much it between them in summary the ultra is a significant value ad over the Bas satin 3 it's got a metal chassis it comes in Black it's got Wi-Fi printing and supports two resin filters it has a much better leveling system and a more stable ball screw to prevent layer lines or other defects coming from the Z AIS it has a much better UI that is actually functionally more helpful it can print twice as fast as its counterpart so long as you've got a compatible resin and for once though I'm genuinely may have just been lucky it has an ACF film which allows for that speed Improvement without a significant reduction to Quality so yeah I think it's clear the word Ultra is far more than just window dressing this is the best print that elu have ever made and they're absolutely killing it right now the price of this version is certainly worth it and more for the extras you get here and if you want the absolute best printing quality then you can just swap out the ACF film for a PFA sheet on the ultra but what a lot of people are doing now is buying a spare resin vat putting ACF on one PFA on the other so they can choose between speed or quality whenever they wish but honestly even for Miniatures this is the one time I I'm probably going to stick with ACF and I'm just going to pray that when I replace it with a new sheet it's just as good please let me know which of these printers you decided on and why down in the comments section so I can understand what it is you want from 3D printers I want to say thanks for watching and a huge thanks to our members who you can see listed on the screen now why not consider joining them and supporting us get your name up in the lights and even get early access to videos like this along with exclusive videos helping me shape this channel or you could just leave a tip as a super thanks or just hit the like button or subscribe or nothing it's your call anyway I think that's enough of my Shameless self-promotion thanks again make sure to subscribe because I'll be back faux hammer [Music] out

Channel: FauxHammer

Views: 47,973

Keywords:

Id: g0XerbwjVME

Length: 16min 6sec (966 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 12 2023