The world of 3D printing has developed rapidly over the last few years, but does the Mars 5 Ultra make it easier than ever? I think it’s safe to say that 3D printing has got pretty popular the last few years. Only a couple of years ago 3D printers were expensive, tricky to set up and difficult to maintain. But as the technology has advanced and with them now being a lot more affordable, it’s now easier than ever to get into 3D printing.

Here at Sprues & Brews we’ve always been tempted to dabble in 3D printing, but never knew where to start. There’s been some amazing kickstarters and campaigns that make use of 3D printing from Dark Fantastic Mills and their awesome thematic terrain to STL repositories such as My Mini Factory, and up until now I’d not been able to check them out fully.

So when Elegoo reached out and asked if I’d like to check out the new Mars 5 Ultra resin 3D printer I jumped at the chance. Not only was this a resin printer capable of putting out high quality miniature prints, but they also claimed it was best 3D printer for beginners!

As you can imagine, I was very keen to put this through it’s paces and see just how easy this could be – though I have to admit I was interested to see if it was as straight forward to use as they claimed.

Massive thanks to Elegoo for sending us over a Mars 5 Ultra, some resin and a Mercury Plus (Which we’ll be checking out in a future post) to review! If you would like to support the site then why not pick up your hobby goodies through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself money too?

So let’s dive straight in and see just what this printer can do!

Mars 5 Ultra Review

A couple of days later, a massive box arrived on my door step holding inside the Mars 5 Ultra. I’ve heard horror stories of older 3D printers, and especially filiment ones that required quite a lot of building, set up and calibration. I’m very happy to say that this was not the case with this printer. Inside the box was the unit itself (With removable lid that lifts off, rather than the swinging lid of some older models), the build plate, wifi adaptor and a box of accessories to get you started (a tool to clean the tank, a tool to remove prints from the plate, masks, gloves and filter funnels.

In no time at all the unit was built and set up – I’ve used an ikea unit to house it, with some adaptations made to help with airflow, and it fitted perfectly – the dimensions are 260 x 268 x 451.5 mm³ which is smaller than I had expected it to be, and should easily fit on most desks. This is probably something you want to leave set up permanently, so it’s good to find a decent home for it rather than having to take it out and pack it away every time you use it.

The Mars 5 Ultra has some packaging material and film covering the screens and delicate areas – so just make sure you’ve checked over and removed all of those before you use it for the first time.

There’s a nice touchscreen on the printer itself that is used for set up and a lot of your basic functions – on start up the printer actually runs through a self diagnostic and calibration that gets the device ready for printing straight away. This is a great touch, as one of the things that can really affect print fails is an incorrectly calibrated build plate. With the Mars 5 Ultra doing this step itself, it removes another hurdle for any newcomer. Before using I used the touch screen to connect to my internet and checked over the various settings before my first use.

From a software point of view set up is really easy too. Now, the manual states that you can just install what’s needed from the internet, but I’d highly recommend instead installing them from the included thumb drive that comes in the box. This actually has a bespoke version of Chitubox included on it – so it’s just a case of plugging the drive into your PC and installing Chitubox directly from there.

For those new to 3D printing, Chitubox is slicer software that is used for opening stl files (files with 3d models) and then arranging them on a virtual build plate and getting them ready for sending to the 3D printer itself for printing. We’ll chat about this in more detail a little later, but don’t make the same mistake as me and just install the software from the net, just stick the drive into your pc! I found that the version downloaded didn’t actually have the correct settings for the Mars 5 Ultra, probably as it’s quite a new release.

Mars 5 Ultra – Getting Started

So with the printer set up and the software installed, it was now time to attempt to print something. Now, I was a complete beginner to 3D printing, so this was uncharted ground for me – through the manual was pretty clear on all the steps. Essentially I needed to open up an STL file on Chitubox, get it ready for printing and then transfer it to the printer.

On the thumb drive included in the box is a sample chess rook that is designed to try out the printer and make sure everything is running ok. With Chitubox open, I simply added this file and could see a 3D representation of it on an exact copy of the build plate on the screen. I could move this around, rotate it and make sure it’s in just the right place. While printing just this test rook didn’t need much in the way of planning on where to put it, once you’re printing more models then its worth putting some thought into how you lay them out. Due to the way 3D printers work, it will take just as long to print 1 model as it will 10 (maximum height off the build plate being the main thing that determines how long it will take) – so you may as well load it efficiently in order to maximise the best use of time (As it will take a few hours to print a model, you may as well print a plate full of them at the same time)

One of the great features of the Mars 5 Ultra is the internal camera – this allows you to watch on the progress without taking the lid off, and also it will record a video of the entire print, which is a fun thing to watch back!

Now, I’d like to say my first print went flawlessly – however I did have a couple of issues that are purely my fault and not the fault of the printer. One thing to be very aware of with resin printing is that resin can be quite temperamental if it isn’t warm enough. A printer that has been running is already warm from the heat generated while printing, but resin can be quite cold straight out of the bottle – especially on a miserable October night!

On my first print I hadn’t done anything to warm the resin and simply poured it into the resin vat and started the print. Unfortunately, with the resin still cold it failed to adhere to the build plate and instead I had a mess of semi cured resin fused to the FEP sheet above the light source. With some care I managed to remove the failure, and used the devices tank cleaning function to cure the resin that was left in the tank so that it can be peeled off the FEP to ensure there’s no stray bits that can cause damage to the printer.

With resins learned, and a tank now filled with warmer resin I proceeded to try again…

Learning the Process

With a new insight into what not to do, I decided to try and do another print. This time going into the Chitubox software to correctly check the settings against the resin I had, making sure the resin was warm enough and loading up the build plate with some more models. Part of me was a little worried when I started the print again, but as the initial layers started printing I heard the satisfying velcro tear noise of the players lifting off the FEP sheet as the printer started it’s journey up out of the resin vat inside the printer

About 4 hours later the printer beeped to tell me the print was complete and it was time to see what had been created. Donning some gloves and a mask (Resin is toxic, so make sure to be careful) I removed the lid and fitted the plastic drip tray. This simply slots under the resin vat and makes sure to capture any drips from removing the build plate from the printer. The build plate is attached with a nice locking mechanism that makes it really easy to remove – it simply slides out showing the supported models attached.

Armed with a tool to remove the models from the plate (These hold on really well to combat gravity as the plate moves up out of the resin as it prints) I carefully separated the models one by one, removed the supports and cleaned and cured them (I used the Elegoo Mercury clean and cure station – review coming soon!)

I have to say I was blown away by the results! The fine folks at My Mini Factory had sent me over some sample files from their Knight Models DC Multiverse Miniatures Game Campaign, and they turned out brilliantly! The likenesses of Batman and Superman were excellent, with Superman even having the facial likeness of Henry Cavill! And this is just a newbie to 3D printing trying out some initial files. I had some things that I’d learned from these to tweak for the next prints, but the Mars 5 Ultra really did what it claimed – a complete beginner to 3D printing could knock out models that looked just as good as physical models with minimal effort.

What’s really nice with the printer is that while you can do everything from Chitubox and send it over the network to print wirelessly, you also have the option of loading up a thumb drive with your sliced files and sticking that into the printer directly. The second being a great option if you want to slice a load of files and have them prepped to just print without having to have your PC turned on.

Becoming a Printing Pro

One thing I love about the Mars 5 Ultra is how it holds your hands through the initial stages of learning to 3D print, but also gives you the tools to do more advanced things such as calibrating your exposure times to make them more suited for the particular resin you are using. The printer does also have a fast print mode which promises to make printing much quicker, without making any sacrifice to quality.

To try this out I decided to print up a batch of models from Highland Miniatures. These are 32mm Fantasy models with some excellent detail – I wanted to see if using the fast model worked as intended, and also see if the printer could handle bigger models.

I’m happy to report that the Mars 5 Ultra passed with flying colours. The Cavalry unit was printed up in multiple parts, with the base, steed and rider all seperate pieces, while the banner bearer was made up of just two parts. Over the course of a few nights I printed around 20 skeleton guard and 5 knights, and with the fast mode on these took around 2 hours a batch, much quicker than the standard settings with no loss of quality!

The real star of the show however was the Highland Vampire Lady on Zombie Dragon – for a small printer the Mars 5 Ultra has a pretty impressive build capacity of 153.36 x 77.76 x 165 mm³ – with careful placement this holds 8-10 32mm miniatures. For the Dragon this was build up over 3 different sessions, one for the wings, another for the body and vampire and a final one for the scenic base. Being able to print up a huge model like this over the course of an evening and night really sold to me the advantages of 3D printing. Have a big game of D&D coming up? You can easily get models for it printed over the course of a few nights using the Mars 5 Ultra. Wanting to try out some new miniatures games? Lots of companies are offering files (both free and to purchase) for use with some brand new games that would otherwise struggle to exist without this way of delivering miniatures.

Summary

So what do I think of the Mars 5 Ultra and is it really a resin 3d printer for beginners? I’ve had about 2 weeks with this printer now, and while I did still have some moments of learning with this thing (Make sure you get the resin warm enough before printing!) this was an amazing experience and a lot of the heavy lifting was already done by the Mars 5 Ultra and the team at Elegoo.

Without having to do a lot of setup and calibration it really makes it easier than it’s ever been to start 3D printing, and it’s not that expensive to get started either – The RRP for the printer is £290, and it can be picked up for just £231.99 from the Elegoo website.

This review is very much aimed at Tabletop Wargames fans and miniatures collectors who want to lean into 3D printing and want to get started as easily as possible, and the Mars 5 Ultra does that with flying colours. With the surprisingly large print capacity you can print both miniatures but also terrain too (Though make sure that it is compatible with resin printers and can be built in parts – you’ll need a bigger or filament printer for large one piece terrain.

I’m very much looking forward to printing more with this printer, and now I have been bitten by the 3D printing bug I’m eager to start diving into some other devices too! Maybe I should treat myself to a filament printer for building bigger terrain pieces…

The Mars 5 Ultra is available to pre order now and is available for delivery from late October

Elegoo provided Sprues & Brews with a Mars 5 Ultra for review purposes.

Published by Matt Crowther

View all posts by Matt Crowther