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The Sweet-Spot for 3D Printing Minis - Elegoo Mars 3 Pro review
18K views
Nov 30, 2022
UPDATE: Contrary to my note - the Mars 3 Pro "does" have an anti-scratch glass layer on top of the screen. Do you 3D print or want to 3D print miniatures? Well, look no further than the Elegoo Mars 3 pro. Whilst it has some quirks (like all printers), with this build volume, resolution and price point. It's the perfect jumping-off point or upgrade for you to print large squads of units, vehicles and scenery for your favourite wargames - and yes - I print some Warhammer stuff too. Buy the Elegoo Mars 3 Pro Elegoo: https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=1821442&u=3060349&m=104244&urllink=&afftrack= Element Games (UK): https://elementgames.co.uk/paints-hobby-and-scenery/elegoo-3d-printing/elegoo-mars-3-pro?d=10279 Amazon: https://geni.us/ElegooMars3Pro eBay: https://geni.us/Mars3ProEbay This Video is part of our series looking for the Best 3D printer for Miniatures; https://www.fauxhammer.com/top-10/the-best-3d-printer-for-miniatures-models/ Special thanks to the following Creators who provided models The Custom Bit: https://thecustombit.com/ Grey Tide Studio: https://greytidestudio.com/ Blackforge Games: https://www.blackforgegames.co.nz/ Bestiarum Miniatures: https://www.myminifactory.com/users/Bestiarum%20Miniatures The Lion's Tower: https://www.myminifactory.com/users/The_Lions_Tower One Page Rules: https://www.myminifactory.com/users/onepagerules Puppets War: https://puppetswar.eu/
View Video Transcript
0:00
So with everyone going on about 8K and DLP printers at the moment, do 4K printers still matter
0:06
Well, yeah, quite a bit. And if you want to print things to the same quality as retail Warhammer miniatures, this is the sweet spot for you
0:15
After all, there's a ton of amazing 3D printed parts companies that have been operating incredibly well since the original Mars' release back in 2019
0:24
And the Mars 2 only really increased the print speed by giving it a monochrome LCD
0:29
But in the game of technology, we always want more, and the 4K resolution is a solid jump over the previous 2K offering
0:37
The Mars 3 makes 3D printing high-quality miniatures available to the masses at an affordable price
0:43
So hi, I'm Ross, and welcome to Fauxhammer Videos. Come with me now as we print some of these cool miniatures and models on the Mars 3 Pro
0:52
I want to start by thanking Eligu for sending this out for review. It immediately got our top pick for the best beginner 3D printer on Fohammer.com
1:00
Let me show you why. First up, the Mars 3 and Mars 3 Pro stand directly next to the Anycubic Mono 4K and the Frozen Mini 4K, and it stands strong
1:10
Of the three printers, the Mars has a larger build volume at no cost to the print resolution
1:15
The Mars 3 has more pixels across its larger surface, matching the 35 micron resolution of its competitors
1:21
which isn't bad considering it's middle of the road when it comes to price point
1:26
So how do they keep the price down? Well, let me take you through my journey with the Elegoo Mars 3 Pro
1:31
as I print some really cool stuff. First, some practical use issues
1:35
which I'll put under the banner of typical 3D printer quirks. They've all got them
1:40
Printer setup was easy enough. It's mostly pull it out of the box and plug it in
1:44
But when it comes to leveling, I noticed the first cost saving measure. The whole process is still manual and requires you to raise and lower the bed yourself before locking it into place
1:54
Other modern printers have adopted a more automated approach where a sensor essentially detects the low position so all you need to do is tighten some screws
2:02
It's not a deal breaker, this method is traditional, easy and it's one less component to go wrong
2:08
Another cost saving measure is the build plate. It's just a flat surface rather than being laser etched or even textured
2:15
But to be honest, I've never put much value in a laser etched plate anyway. After a few part removals, they're all going to get scratched and scraped anyway
2:22
and the deeply etched ones just often make things harder to remove the models
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Oh, and this plate is on a ball axis rather than the now much preferred 4-point screw plate
2:33
And the cheap USB stick they provide stopped working for me after about three uses
2:37
My PC struggles to even recognize it now when it's plugged in. So invest in a decent brand stick because these often just cause problems by dying halfway through a print to fully locking up the printer Again though this is fairly typical across all 3D printers
2:52
One thing I do find annoying though is that the printer fan is on constantly when the printer's on
2:57
rather than just during a print. It's not loud, but it's far from quiet
3:01
and it's enough that I need to turn the printer off when I'm recording audio from across the room
3:05
Another minor annoyance though they all have these is the front of the UV lid is also far too close to the vat. So when you get resin splashes, I found
3:14
that after just a few prints, these run down and under the lid seal and over time, it sticks the
3:19
lid to the printer body. One thing I did notice with the printer, though this is a really minor
3:23
nitpick, is that the menu is often read from right to left instead of left to right. Again, you know
3:29
where everything is and you can still press the buttons, it's just not really been very westernized
3:34
But that's literally everything I could find wrong with this printer. And I'm sure you'll agree if you've been printing for a while that most of these things are just quirks that you'll get with any 3D printer on the market
3:45
And I'm really having to split hairs and scrape the bottom of the barrel just to find anything to critique here
3:51
So onto the positives and I'll get onto the printing in a minute. But first up, this is the pro version of the Mars 3
3:58
That appears to mean only two things. One, there's a glass screen protector on top of the LCD as standard
4:03
and two you get a built-in carbon filter which you can actually remove and add as you wish and if
4:10
people are wondering does this work and does it get rid of the smells yeah and it works really well
4:15
and with this plugged in and running other than the noise i can't even tell when the printer's on
4:20
so along with the printer elego sent me a bottle of their standard resin which
4:25
well i'd argue that it's the best of the oem brand resins but it's the cheapest one they do
4:31
and it won't show off the two potential of a 4k LCD. But anyway, I want to show you guys the out
4:37
of box experience you're likely to get. So I'll use this stuff. So I started as usual, finding the
4:43
best exposure settings for the temperature in my environment. Thankfully, LightG has a ton of resin
4:49
profiles available for this printer. So I selected the most common one with the most success from
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their list of available options as a starting point. And I've printed everything in this video
5:00
at 0.03 millimeters because that's what most closely matches the XY resolution. I printed out
5:07
the exposure test a few times at different settings to see if I could improve the prints
5:11
but the setting from Lightchoo was perfect already. So for people like me who are huge
5:15
Warhammer fans, I printed some more Spartan parts from the custom bit, but I also printed some new
5:20
parts from Grey Tide Studio. And I'm sure you can see here, these not only match the quality of
5:25
production Warhammer components but actually in a lot of cases you get more detail in the 3D printed parts And yes just to confirm I have had image blur turned on at its lowest setting to avoid layer lines
5:39
I also printed some parts from some of my other favorite creators, such as this guy here from BCRM Miniatures
5:45
I forget his name, but he's the guy with the huge big bendy sword. And I just love this model because it lets me show texture
5:52
It lets me show sharp pointy pieces. and he's got the big bendy sword which lets me show just how good this resin is when you actually
5:59
cure it and that's something that's really important to miniatures because if you get
6:03
something too brittle it'll just break in your bag when you're transporting it to a game
6:08
I also printed this dragon and king model from the lion's towers kingdoms of Tolarius range
6:13
Just look at the detail on this dragon and this is from the basic resin. It's nice and smooth but
6:19
also flexible. However, some of the components are a little bit soft and suffer with warping due to
6:25
this, but you can easily repose them with hot water. Some other models I printed came from Red
6:30
Makers, and these heretic models they designed really showcase the details this printer's capable
6:35
of when it comes to War Games miniatures. And Puppets War are now releasing some of their
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sculptors STL files also. The Bushi Warriors are amongst some of my favorites, and the smooth
6:45
surfaces here showcase just how capable this printer is at dealing with layer and voxel lines
6:51
But don't worry, it's not just miniatures, I have printed some large stuff too. This Aloy model comes
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from Hell Creator, who's one of my new favorite creators and makes models really close to my heart
7:02
things based on video games. So check out his monthly Patreon if you like things like this
7:08
But it wouldn't be a Fauxhammer review unless I printed something from Blackforge Games. And this
7:13
time it was the Elicia model from their collection. Please forgive me if I'm mispronouncing that
7:19
Like always there are superb details on this sculpt and thanks to the print size it only took
7:24
me four short print sessions for the whole model. Elicia herself took only one. So whilst I could
7:30
talk all day about miniatures those models were actually sculpted at their relative miniature
7:35
scale. So what happens when you take a huge model and shrink her down? Well you get details like this
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and honestly this should answer the question do you need more than 4k now i don't typically like
7:50
to use different resins in my printer reviews because it opens the doors to comments like why
7:55
this resin and not that resin or can you test this one or why i'm wrong for whichever one i decided
8:01
to choose but as i reached out to elegoo to ask if there's anything better i could use they didn't
8:06
have anything available at the time though now they do have their 8k resin they were quite happy
8:12
for me to choose whatever resin I saw fit so I chose frozen aqua gray 4k resin why because I had a bottle of it lying around I wanted the best I could get from this resin and printer So after a few more exposure tests I printed a
8:27
selection of one-page rules models in the raw setting without any anti-aliasing or image blur
8:33
But I then printed them again with the lowest level of anti-aliasing and image blur settings
8:37
and the highest level of settings just to compare them. There are a ton of different configurations
8:43
you can try, but I'm going to leave that to you to work out based on your own preferences
8:47
and whatever resin you choose. Generally, the more anti-aliasing and image blur you apply
8:52
the less visible the voxel lines and layer lines are going to be respectively, but this is at the cost of sharpness in the details on your model. I was happy with the
9:01
lowest levels of both anti-aliasing and image blur, and while some layer lines are marginally
9:06
visible, I'm confident that primer and paint will cover these. Once I'd got that dialed in
9:11
I was still in a bit of a video game mood. I'd just completed Halo Infinite and wondered if I
9:15
could find any 32mm Halo miniatures. And I've got a whole blog post up on Fauxhammer.com explaining
9:21
where I found these models and they were all completely free. Unfortunately, I don't know
9:26
who the designer and sculptor is, so if you know, please pop it down in the comments because I would
9:30
really like to credit them in the description. So anyway, I was able to print out this small force
9:35
of UNSC Marines and ODST troops, along with a vehicle that looks kind of like a Puma. Despite
9:41
being made for a 15mm game and scaled up to 32, all of these models came off the printer with sharp
9:47
details and deep recesses. It was a simple case of zenithal highlight, contrast paint, dry brush
9:53
and wash to create a small force of models in less than a day. And whilst I couldn't quite print this
9:57
all off in one go, having the Warthog on one plate and the Marines on another, I was happily painting
10:02
my marines as my warthog printed and that finished printing before I finished painting
10:07
So for painting miniatures to somewhat of a Warhammer standard or more you genuinely don't
10:13
need more than this. So honestly from everything from build size to print quality the Elegoo Mars
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3 Pro is the perfect sweet spot for anybody out there interested in being a miniature printer
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Especially if you're looking for your first 3D printer you just found it. So thanks everyone for
10:29
watching and an even bigger thanks to our patrons here who are helping us build the channel allowing
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us to make more and better content if you found this helpful please take a minute to like comment
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hit the notification bell and subscribe see you guys next time faux hammer out
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