Hot on the heels of the release of Elegoo’s Saturn 4 and Saturn 4 ultra (the later of which I have reviewed here), comes the next offerings from Elegoo with the next generation of their Mars model printers.
Elegoo Mars 5 Ultra, £290 £231.99
Pros:
- Straight out-of-the-box printing with the auto levelling build plate
- Tilt release technology gives fast print times
- Crisp detailed quality prints
Cons
- Smaller build volume than other models
Rating: 4/5
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Elegoo Mars 5 Ultra review: First Impressions and unpacking
Before I take a deeper dive, here are the technical specifications :
| LCD Screen | 7” 9K Mono LCD |
| Screen Protection | MSLA Stereolithography |
| Z axis Accuracy | 0.02mm |
| XY Resolution | 18x18µm (8520 x 4320) |
| UI Touch Screen | 4” Capacitive Touch Screen |
| Slicer Software | ChituBox |
| Build Volume | (L)153.36mm x (W)77.76mm x (H)165mm |
| Printing Technology | MSLA Stereo lithography |
| Light Source | COB Light Source |
| Wave Length | 405nm |
| Printing Speed | Max: 150mm per Hour |
| Connectivity | USB and WiFi |
| Layer Thickness | 0.01 – 0.2mm |
| Printer Dimension | (L)260mm x (W)268mm x (H)451.5mm |
| Gross Weight | 10.8kg |
| Net | 8.8kg |
The printer comes packaged up in a single box with plenty of filling material to keep it safe during transit.
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Once the foam and cushioned air packaging have been removed, the print is then wrapped in protective plastic wrapping to protect it from scratches.
Elegoo Mars 5 Ultra, £290 £231.99
The same sleek dark grey UV lid that I saw on the Saturn 4 Ultra is present here too, however, unlike the Saturn 4 Ultra, it is not a hinged flip lid and is a standard ‘lift off’ type.
Packaged within the printer's cavity are the other parts of the printer such as the build plate, resin vat, power pack and accessories pack.
The accessories pack contained the familiar accoutrements of rubber gloves, face masks, filters, alan keys, metal and plastic spatulas and a USB thumb drive.
A new inclusion however was a ‘gift card’ with a scratchable activation code which gives a three-month free trial of ChituBox Pro, which appears to be the current preferred slicing software for Elegoo printers.
As was provided with the Saturn 4 Ultra, the Mars 5 Ultra also comes with a plastic drip tray to sit around the resin vat to protect the tilt mechanism when re-filling with resin.
Elegoo Mars 5 Ultra, £290 £231.99
Physical Overview
As mentioned above, the Mars 5 Ultra utilises a ‘lift off’ UV lid rather than the flip-up hinged lid, this may be due to how much smaller the Mars printers are compared to the Saturns. Both types have their own pros and cons so it really comes down to personal preference. The advantage of a flip-up lid is not needing to find space in your work area to set it down, the downside is that when the lid is flipped up, it requires free space behind the print to accommodate it in its open position.
The build plate is of the same solid construction that we saw on the Saturn 4 Ultra, with the geometric laser-etched build surface being suspended beneath the solid housing. Also present was the quick-release attachment method to the Z axis, which itself consists of sturdy dual linear rails to keep the build plate steady during printing.
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The metal resin vat comes pre-installed with a PFA release film sheet and is protected by two temporary films which are removed before installation. Two big pouring spouts on opposing corners allow for easy decanting of resin when you want to clean out the vat and are held in place by two big thumb screws.
The WiFi antenna screws into the right-hand side where you will also find the USB port, DC power input and the on/off switch. Once attached it can be adjusted so that it sits vertically, thus reducing the amount it protrudes to the side of the printer.
The 4” touch screen is in a vertical orientation and sits off-centre to the right-hand side at the front of the printer. The User Interface is clear and feels responsive to the touch with no delay or lag when navigating through the menus.
Setup
With the build plate and resin vat installed, and the power plugged in it was time to turn the machine on for the first time. Upon initial startup, the printer carried out some self-checks which were shown on the display panel in a ‘checklist’ format. Once these were complete, we were prompted to connect to a WiFi connection which was as simple as selecting your network and entering the password.
Once the printer was connected to WiFi and gained an internet connection, it notified us that there was an update available which was pushed Over The Air (OTA). Once the update was complete, the machine was rebooted a couple of times and carried out further self-tests.
Having the printer automatically notify you when there is an available update is great as you do not need to periodically check the manufacturers' website to check that you have the latest software version.
As with the Saturn 4 ultra, the Mars 5 ultra also has a self-leveling build plate which, in our opinion, is one of the biggest quality-of-life improvements present on these latest generations of 3D printers. This feature allows you to print straight out of the box with the default settings without having to do manual levelling. One downside with the build plate design is that after you have completed a print, there is no way to angle it down to allow excess resin to drain back into the vat.
Another great feature that has been included in this generation of Mars printers is the Resin Exposure Range Finding. What this does is effectively split the LCD screen into up to eight different exposure zones, with each zone having an adjustable exposure time setting.
Elegoo Mars 5 Ultra, £290 £231.99
This allows for much faster exposure calibration as you can test multiple time settings in a single print rather than one after the other, drastically cutting down the time it takes to get those perfect settings to give you crisp, detailed prints!
I put this feature to the test to calibrate the settings for this review and opted to use the well-known ‘Cones of Calibration’ by table flip foundries. For the first run, we split the screen into eight zones, starting at the default 2.5s decreasing in 0.1-second increments to 1.8s and set the machine to print. This took roughly 40 minutes to print, and once complete I removed each of the individual prints and laid them out on a sheet of paper being sure to write the corresponding time setting beneath each of them. I then ran this a second time ranging from 1.7s to 1.0s, again keeping track of which print corresponded to each time setting.
Once these were all washed and cured, I inspected them and found that the 1.5s setting gave the best detail, riding that fine line between over and underexposure. I was impressed with this feature as I was able to fully calibrate the settings in well under two hours, without it this would have taken well over eight hours of printing time alone!
With settings now firmly calibrated it was time to move on to the fun part, printing detailed 3D models!
First Print
As I already had the ChituBox slicing software installed on our computer I could skip the installation step, however, with that being said it is already pre-loaded onto the provided USB thumb drive so it is a simple installation if you need it.
I opened up ChituBox and selected the Mars 5 Ultra as our printer which brought up the virtual representation of the build plate. The size of the Mars is noticeably smaller than the Saturn and other 10” screen printers, so this is something to bear in mind when deciding on the right printer for you.
For the first print, I went with these large ogre models which have some great details on them which would put the Mars 5 Ultra to the test and I just managed to squeeze all three of them on the plate at once!
With the printer powered on and using the ChituBox manager tool, we were able to send the files over the WiFi connection straight to the printer's internal storage and started the print all via the desktop software without needing to touch the printer at all.
Once the print was underway we noticed that as each layer of the print was created, the resin vat itself tipped down inside the printer's body and then rose back up. This was the new tilt release technology, which claims print speeds of up to 150 mm/h—when combined with PFA release film. These print speeds usually call for the use of specialist high-speed resins and an ACF release film, which has a hazy, semi-opaque look. It is thought that ACF release films' opaqueness may let UV light to diffuse through, resulting in softer detail whilst high-speed resins tend to be more brittle after curing, making prints more fragile
Separating the printed layer from the PFA release film with this tilt release technology, as opposed to just pulling it upward, the suction forces on the print are lessened, lowering the possibility of failure while preserving high-speed printing.
The total print time was circa two hours and fifteen minutes, which for a model of this size was very impressive as when I ran the same file on another printer it took almost seven hours! Once the print was finished, I popped them off the build plate and took them for the wash and curing post-processing.
Elegoo Mars 5 Ultra, £290 £231.99
The prints came out looking amazing, with all of the fine details being crisp and well-defined and even at a layer height of 0.05mm there were no visible layer lines. The fact that the printing speed is so much faster than other printers whilst still maintaining such a high level of detail really is mind-blowing, from individual stitching on clothing down to the tiny ringlets on the chain mail armour!
Feature Testing
The tilt release technology isn’t the only piece of technical innovation that Elegoo have packed into this printer, there are a plethora of other advances such as the AI camera for detecting print failures and smart sensors which can detect resin shortage and foreign objects present in the resin vat.
One other feature I wanted to put to the test was the ‘Power Loss Resume Printing’ function which, as the name suggests allows you to continue a print after the printer has lost power, whether that be due to a power outage or human error (yes I have embarrassingly mistakenly turned off a printer mid print before!).
I topped up the vat with some of Elegoos Standard Photopolymer Resin, loaded in some new models and set the print off. I left it roughly halfway through the print time and then to simulate a loss of power, I turned off the power at the socket. When I reinstated the power, the machine raised the build plate up out of the resin and gave a prompt on the touch screen to continue the print. I took this time to take a reference photo to compare later once it had been completed and then clicked to resume the print.
The photo gave a good reference and shows the clear cut of that layer where the power was lost and once completed and the models post-processed, I could see what impact the loss of power had on the final print.
Elegoo Mars 5 Ultra, £290 £231.99
Looking above you can see that whilst overall the models did finish printing, there were still some failures present in the more delicate areas. This was likely caused by the support structures not re-attaching when the print was resumed, which in turn caused some delamination, most noticeable on the axe and sword.
That being said, whilst not perfect these are easily salvageable with a bit of lobbying magic and are vastly more favourable than losing the entire print!
Elegoo Mars 5 review: final verdict
Overall I have been very impressed by the Elegoo Mars 5 Ultra and it’s great to see the innovations and quality-of-life improvements making their way into this next generation of printers. The auto levelling build plate makes setup a breeze and really does allow for printing straight out of the box!
I do hope that Elegoo keeps up the innovation moving forward with future generations and we hope to see an inbuilt heater as that addition would tick all of the boxes.
One obvious downside to the Mars 5 Ultra is its reduced build volume so depending on your needs, you may quickly outgrow it. That being said, the quality and speed at which it can produce models really is great.
If you’re looking for an entry into resin 3D printing, you won’t go wrong with choosing the Mars 5 Ultra. However, depending on your budget and printing needs you may want to skip to a larger printer.
