While working on the weapons for the figurine that I am making, it became obvious to me that I could not achieve the level of detail that I needed with my Creality CR-10S printer. A friend of mine has an ELEGOO Mars printer and printed the parts that I needed for the sword.



I was super-impressed with the print quality. I was convinced that I needed to get a resin printer.



I was so close to pulling the trigger on the ELEGOO Mars. However, ELEGOO announced that they would be releasing a larger version of the printer called the Saturn. This was around the August/September 2020 timeframe. The printer was supposed to hit Amazon in October 2020. I figured I could wait a month or two.

October came and went and there was no sign of the Saturn. I guess the COVID-19 pandemic caused a delay. I waited 5 months for it to become available on Amazon, and when it did, I was really surprised to see that it was selling for $730! As it turns out, the $500 price that I saw on ELEGOO's site was the pre-order price. I did not realize that the final price of the Saturn was going to be double that of the Mars. That seemed like a hefty price tag for a printer that is just a little bigger than the Mars. I probably wouldn't even take advantage of the full build volume anyway since I want to use the printer for small parts.

I decided to bite the bullet on the Mars, which by now had also seen an upgrade in the Mars 2 Pro. It's a little bigger than its predecessor, and has some upgrades in the air filtration department.



I also splurged and picked up the ELEGOO Mercury Plus washing and curing station. When you price out what it would take to build your own UV curing station, the $130 price tag on this unit actually turns out to be a really good deal.



I can't wait to get this puppy up and running. Unfortunately, the printer and curing station arrived a day earlier than expected, while the resin now says it'll be delivered a day late! Staring at this printer for two days is going to be torture!





I originally wanted to keep all the printers next to each other, but then there's nowhere for my Glowforge to go.



I decide to put the Glowforge back where it was next to the Creality, and set up a new space for the resin printer. I pulled this old dresser out of the garage and set it up. It actually works out nicely since now I can use the drawers for all the supplies I will need.



Finally, two days later, the resin that I ordered arrived.



While I waited for the resin to arrive, I familiarized myself with Chitubox. That's the software that is used to prep and slice models for printing. I added supports to all the models that I wanted to print for the figurine armor and got them all ready for printing.



I love how the printer shows a little 3D rendering of the model to be printed. That's a neat little feature.



The breastplates for the figure took about 2.5 hours to print. They came out amazing. I gave them a good washing in alcohol and then put them in the curing station for a few minutes.



I am super-impressed with my first print. I learned the hard way that I should break off the supports before curing the prints. After it's cured, the supports are a little harder to pull off. That, and I had to put the parts back in to the curing staton to cure the underside of the parts.



Not having a resin printer has halted progress on the figurine for several months, so I am super excited to finally be able to print all the armor parts that I need. They are going to look fantastic!