Phrozen Sonic Mini 4K review - The highest quality resin prints

fast monochrome resin printing now with 4k resolution this frozen sonic mini 4k has produced some of the best 3d prints i've ever done [Music] a while ago i reviewed the frozen sonic mini a resin 3d printer that introduced a monochrome lcd that vastly sped up the curing time and therefore reduced the total print time being monochrome also gives the lcd the advantage of being much more durable since then we've seen monochrome lcds being introduced to other resin 3d printers and that's definitely a win for consumers so where to next the frozen sonic mini 4k as you might have guessed has a 4k lcd up from 2k on the previous model but is that the only improvements let's take a closer look the frozen sonic mini 4k is an updated version of the previous model the frozen sonic mini which is sold for 200 us dollars this updated version has an increased price of 330 us dollars it's also available in australia from 3d printers online and my review machine has been provided free of charge from this company obviously the big change is the 4k resolution that's 3840 by 2160 and that's the same 4k resolution as you'll find on high-end tvs and monitors the printing area is expanded to 6.1 inches and that combination gives us an effective pixels per inch of 722 like its predecessor the lcd is monochrome so rather than having red green and blue elements there's just a single color that makes the screens more durable guaranteed for 2000 working hours and it's nice that they've got a three month warranty on that lcd as well this printer supports all of the frozen resins but if you've already got a brand that you know well it is compatible with any other third-party resins like the majority of 3d printers these days this printer was well packaged inside a cardboard box with layers of foam to protect the delicate components inside the smaller box we have things like an instruction manual the printer's feet and usb flash drive a single pair of gloves a funnel a scraper the actual build platform and the compact power supply this one's supplying 24 volts with a maximum of 2 amps it only took about 10 minutes until i was ready to print steps included putting on the rubbery feet running the lcd exposure test which makes sure that the lcd pixels are working as well as the uv led backlights and leveling the bed we're assisted by a menu we loosen the four bolts holding the build platform to the frame place a regular sheet of paper on top of the bare lcd confirm this on the lcd and wait for the build platform to move down vertically until it touches the lcd where we then do up the screws following this we can raise the build platform remove the piece of paper and instead stall the vat in its place this printer came with a bottle of aqua grey 4k resin which at this stage can be poured inside the vat and with the addition of the printer's lid that means we are ready to go before all of this however i took the chance to directly compare the sonic mini with the sonic mini 4k as you can see the exterior dimensions are identical only the color of the lid has changed comparing the build platforms we can see that the 4k version is slightly larger this is particularly clear when we overlay them despite this the dimensions of the vat are pretty much the same as we can see when we put the new metal vat over the top and compare it horizontally and vertically if you need further confirmation here's the sonic mini vat installed on the mini 4k the material of the vat has been upgraded from plastic which according to the comments in my last video is prone to cracking the new vats are metal and dimensionally they're very similar to previous upgrade units for the sonic mini which means i can use my spares on the 4k another improvement is in the shape of the build surface it's now a single machined piece angled up to prevent resin getting into the top compare this to the original mini where resin would flow in and surround all of the bolts holding it together one thing that is the same is the use of ch2 box as the preferred slicer it has support for the machine built in and it also has support for a range of resins with all of the settings pre-made the use of a usb flash drive rather than a micro sd is retained and welcome as is the use of a color touchscreen to control the printer and start prints for me my first impressions were great i was up and printing in around 10 minutes and so far the quality of all of the components seem to be very good unboxing installation and first print was very straightforward and there are some nice improvements there such as the metal vat the larger build volume the refined build platform and of course that 4k resolution but how does it actually print to answer that question let's have a closer look at my test prints the first test print was this ring and it was the one included on the usb flash drive examining this i have zero complaints it's got lots of fine details and layer lines are imperceivable recently you might have seen a video from me on this ikea wardrobe clip one of them was broken and i used 3d printing to reproduce a hard to find part at that time i made one from resin using this printer and again the quality is excellent the surface finish is almost as good as the original injection molded part in fact the only thing letting it down is the fact that it's so detailed you can see the individual polygons that make up the stl this type of part is probably unusual to do on a resin printer but this test shows that it is viable if that's the only option you have leading up to halloween i test printed a mayan death whistle on my prusa mini i decided to do a comparison resin print using this printer when we put the two side by side we can see the advantages of this technology the prussian mini print is quite reasonable but you can see prominent layer lines throughout whereas we can only see a slight staircasing effect on the very top and shallow surfaces of the resin printed version when you're testing detail with a resin printer a classic model to use is this eiffel tower and this printer did not disappoint to my eye this print has two blemishes but they're both my fault firstly i damaged the very small railing removing it from the printer's bed and secondly the top is cut off because i scoured up the model just a little bit too high apart from that the detail is truly stunning you could print a big one of these on an ftm printer but you would struggle to print one this small with this much detail another popular type of print from resin printers are miniatures so i decided to print this ware tiger as far as i could see everything from the sdl was faithfully reproduced we can't see any layer lines and we have crisp details on the various surface textures found on this model i decided to challenge the printer by printing it again except smaller where tiger number two is approximately fifty percent of the size and everything that can be seen on the first model can also be seen on the second that left me no choice but to print it again half the size once more this wear tiger once again has nice details from its fur and muscles and you can still make out the finer details like the shape of the teeth and mouth on a roll i thought i would do it one more time check out this tiny guy finally we start to lose a little bit of detail but really this is quite impressive i think if you wanted to spend the time refining the resin profile in tutu box you'd probably get an even better result but just in case you're not impressed here it is versus the original model and here it is versus my pinky my final test print in my opinion was the most impressive and probably the most detailed 3d print that i've ever done when searching for a detailed model this awk chief seemed to fit the bill and i really am blown away by the final result that came off the printer all of the hair is finely detailed all of the wrinkles on the face all of the expression and style it's one thing to have a really detailed 3d model it's another thing to actually be able to print it and show all of that detail in its entirety while i have some excellent prints here that's not to say that everything was entirely smooth in fact i had some problems with chittoo box with one particular version seeming to be corrupted and telling me the printer profile was invalid when i opened the software the resin profile for this printer in that version seemed to be a little bit off not curing the initial layers enough and sometimes the model would peel off and fail however the combination of a new version of tutu box and finding a reddit post that linked to the factory settings for this particular printer from frozen as well as a community spreadsheet with some other suggested resin settings was able to cure my problems and i didn't have any failures from that point onwards so you might have noticed that this is another resin printer receiving a good review from me and i honestly think that so far i haven't reviewed a bad one there's a lot of good resin printers on the market and that makes sense because they're really quite similar to each other they each only have one moving part they generally share the same main board that's made by the people who make t2 box and therefore use the same software and typically they all have pretty good print quality enough for the average user so how do you distinguish between them which one might be right for you and why am i happy with this one for me firstly one thing to look for is the effective pixels per inch you need to look at the resolution of the screen and compare that to the size of the build platform to see how many pixels per inch it's capable of and therefore how much detail it can produce resin printers like fdm printers do have consumables such as the lcd so in my opinion it's important if you're looking to buy one that beforehand you're able to work out how much and where you can get replacement lcds it's also nice to know whether you can get things like spare bats to make it easier to change between various types of resin a lot of the time it pays to pick a popular type of printer because you're going to have more aftermarket support for upgrades whether that be simple printed parts on thingiverse or whether that be things like a flexible removable build platform for instance on this machine i found a wham-bam steel sheet that was able to fit on perfectly and i fitted it on for the last few prints that i did one other thing that you should look for is support for a wide range of resins now frozen make a big line of resins and chichu box have the profiles built in for all of those but i think you probably also want your printer to be compatible with any third-party resin and have community support so you don't have to come up with a profile from scratch in terms of all of these things that i've listed this printer ticks the box and therefore i'm happy to recommend it i think the higher price versus the standard sonic mini is probably fair considering you've got a few upgrades most importantly twice the resolution and a larger build area that's why you'll be seeing me use this one in future as i test a wide range of resins for various projects if you've been considering this one or maybe another let me know down below in the comments especially if you've already got one of these please share with your fellow viewers so they can learn from your experience thank you so much for watching and until next time happy resin 3d printing g'day it's michael again if you like the video then please click like if you want to see more content like this in future click subscribe and make sure you click on the bell to receive every notification if you really want to support the channel and see exclusive content become a patron visit my patreon page see you next time

Channel: Teaching Tech

Views: 79,462

Rating: 4.9552112 out of 5

Keywords: 3d printing, 3d printer, 3d print, 3d printed, phrozen, resin, msla, sonic mini, sonic mini 4k, review, test, tested, unboxing, aus, test print, aqua grey, bust, mini, miniature, jewellery, jewelry, model, stl, bug, glitch, reliable, lcd, monochrome, fast, chitubox, profile, wham bam

Id: NUjMGIL5NYE

Length: 12min 21sec (741 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 24 2020