James Bricknell Senior Editor
James has been writing about technology for years but has loved it since the early 90s. While his main areas of expertise are maker tools — 3D printers, vinyl cutters, paper printers, and laser cutters — he also loves to play board games and tabletop RPGs.
- 6 years working professionally in the 3D printing space / 4 years testing consumer electronics for large websites.
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Pros
- Insanely fast
- Create beautiful models
- Excellent price
Cons
- The lift-off lid is cumbersome
- It’s time for wireless monitoring
Printing with resin is both a magical and dreadful experience. The Saturn 3 Ultra is so good at the magical part that the dreadful part washes away like resin in IPA. It’s easily the best experience I’ve had with resin 3D printing.
It’s easy to fall into hyperbole when you review a product that you love. I’ll try not to do that, but if you want a resin 3D printer you should buy this one.
Elegoo Saturn 3 Ultra Spec sheet
| Screen size | 10 inch |
|---|---|
| Layer height | 0.01mm |
| Screen resolution | 12K |
| Official print speed | 150mm/h |
| Print volume | 218.88 x 122.88 x 260mm |
| Printer size | 305.9 x 273 x 562.5mm |
| Carbon filter | Yes |
| File transfer | USB and WiFi |
I’ve always liked Elegoo’s take on resin 3D printers. Its Mars, Saturn and Jupiter printers have offered an affordable way to access resin printing for years and are consistently part of my best 3D printer lineup. In my review of the Saturn 2 I explained that it beat the original Saturn in almost every metric. The Saturn 3 Ultra does that again.
Mechanically, it feels familiar. The only two stand-out changes are a UV lift-off lid that’s a cloudy grey instead of red and a four-point bed adjustment system. Oh, and the power, USB-A port and Wi-Fi antenna have moved to the side of the machine, which is a handy change. No more reaching to the back of what’s essentially a bowl of toxic soup when you need to change the thumb drive.
The Wi-Fi on the Saturn 3 is usable, but I’d like to see Elegoo add more monitoring capabilities. Perhaps a temperature gauge and an app that lets you monitor the progress of the print. I’m not asking for a camera like you see on FDM printers, but any kind of monitoring would be welcome. Right now all you can do is send the file to print and while that is helpful, it’s somewhat limiting.
This is indicative of all resin 3D printers though. FDM printers, with the help of companies like Bambu Lab, and AnkerMake, have started to use apps and cameras to help you monitor your prints from afar. Some even let you print straight from the app. Resin printing has some challenges that make an app harder as you really don’t want to start a print while a model is already on the build plate, but there are opportunities to evolve.
Where FDM in the 2020s shines is the inclusion of more user-friendly, modern conveniences. An app that gave us some basic information would be a step into the future and help bring resin 3D printing into parity with its filament-based cousins.
The Ultra also pushes the screen resolution from 8K to 12K. While you may not notice the difference on large, smooth models, you can see it in small miniatures and models with a lot of texture. Fotis Mint made this stunning Urban Cthulhu sculpt, and you can see each divot in the fabric and each tooth on the jacket’s zipper.
The 12K resolution bump didn’t come with a screen size increase. The 10-inch screen is large enough, though, as is the 218.88 by 122.88 x 260mm build volume. I still maintain that the Saturn is the perfect size for making an army of miniatures for your tabletop games and, because of the way resin printers print layers, you can print 15 minis as quickly as you can print one. The 12K resolution also comes in handy on minis. You can even see the sly grin on this wizard lady’s face, even though she’s just 2 inches tall.
The real progress that the Ultra has made over previous iterations is the speed. Resin 3D printing has always been fast, after all, it’s essentially a light shining through for 1 or 2 seconds per layer. What makes machines slower is mechanically peeling the model off the screen without damaging either. The Ultra uses a new type of film instead of the standard FEP sheet so it can peel the model away faster decreasing the overall print time substantially.
Elegoo says that with the right resin — its Rapid Resin to be exact — the Saturn 3 Ultra could print at 150mm/h. That’s three times faster than the Saturn 2 and a blistering speed for a resin printer. I haven’t got it to print that fast, but what I have printed has been much faster than anything I’ve seen before. An entire crown took less than 3 hours to print (1.5 hours per piece), which I wouldn’t have thought possible before using the Saturn 3 Ultra.
Now we come to the most heinous of crimes and the only real downside of the Saturn 3 Ultra: the lift-off lid. OK, it may not be the end of the world, but lift-off lids are the worst. On a smaller machine like the Mars 3, you can get away with it. But on larger machines like the Saturn, it’s just too cumbersome to be a good idea. Give me a tilt-up lid like the Uniformation GKTwo or double doors. Anything but a lid that requires it to be on a desk with at least four feet of airspace above it. It’s dangerous too as you risk knocking the whole thing over if you aren’t careful.
That terrible omission aside, the Saturn 3 Ultra is my favorite resin printer. It’s almost impossible to match the combination of quality and speed that you get from it and it’s less than $500. I said it at the top, and I’ll say it again here: If you want to buy a resin 3D printer, it should be this one. It ticks every box you could want.
