I’ve got a new 3D Printer for the shop and I’m really excited about the possibilities. The printer is an Elegoo Mars Pro:

New 3D Printer, busy printing the next thing!

The printer is a ‘resin’ type printer where the print bed is moved (rather than a print head) and is dipped into a vat of resin that is cured using Ultraviolet light.  The pattern to be cured is generated by a high resolution LCD under the vat and selectively passes through UV light from below.  The print bed is then raised to the next position and the next layer is projected on to the last.  It’s a slow process, but very high resolution and, I’m hoping, without the printing gaps that you get with a ‘FDM’ type 3D printer.

The print volume is small, only 4.5×2.56×5.9 inches, but almost all of my printing is smaller than this.  Interestingly, with this type of printer the time it takes to print is entirely determined by the height of the object and the layer thickness, while a conventional 3D printer the time it takes to print is a function of the volume of the printed object and the resolution of the extruder.  Hence, in a lot of cases, the print time will be shorter with this type of printer, especially on complex objects.

So, what have I done since I unpacked this yesterday?

Included with the printer was a sample design file of a mythical WatchTower.  I printed it in a Green Translucent resin purposefully keeping it small to test the resolution:

WatchTower complete with Spiral Staircase in the middle of it.

To give you some idea of the size of this tower, try this on:

WatchTower with some perspective added.

Finally, here is a closeup of the walkway at the top of the tower:

Bird’s Eye view of the watchtower. You can see the stairs descending and the printing on the walkway. Those letters are approximately 150 microns thick…