Making Elegoo Saturn 2 Silent

October 1, 2022October 8, 2022 | Jan Mrázek

In my review of Elegoo Saturn 2 I mentioned that Elegoo Saturn 2 is very loud and the noise is unpleasant. The good news is that the silencer kits I make for Saturn 1 work with Saturn 2. In this blog post, I will show you how to install them.

Saturn 2 uses two 50mm fans powered by 24 V. The combination of size and 24V rating is extremely rare. You cannot find any quiet fans in this form (at least in Europe). There is only the SilentiumPC Zephyr 50. These fans are of high quality in my experience and are nearly unhearable (the manufacturer claims 18 dBA). However, Silentium fans require a 12V power supply. If you connect such fans to a 24 V supply, in the better case, they won’t be silent (as they will spin much faster), but also you will significantly shorten their life or immediately burn them. Therefore, you need to step down the voltage to 12V. If you are not afraid of soldering, you can do it quite easily. However, if you cannot solder or you want to support my work, you can use my silencer kits.

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3D printing, Reviews

Elegoo Saturn 2 Review: Is Pixel Size Everything? In-depth Look & Disassembly.

October 1, 2022October 8, 2022 | Jan Mrázek

So far, all my resin printers are LCD printers, and all of them have approximately 50µm pixels. The pixel size is somewhat the ultimate limit to the precision and details it can print. I was considering buying Elegoo Mars 3 or Phrozen Sonic Mini 8K as they have roughly half the size of pixels, as they could improve the quality of my resin-printed models. However, they have a quite small build volume so most of my molds wouldn’t fit, thus, I decided not to buy them. When Elegoo announced Saturn 2 with 28µm pixels and a slightly large build volume than Saturn 1, I decided to pull the trigger, and I got one from the pre-order.

In this review, we will look at how the machine performs. Don’t expect a traditional review when the reviewer prints a few minis and tells you that it prints nicely and basically rephrases the specs. I assume you have some notion about resin printers, and basically, you are just wondering if Elegoo Saturn 2 is worth the money. I use my printers to print precise functional components, we will explore the limits of the printer, and we will also look inside the printer and its construction.

Note that this review wasn’t sponsored in any way, and I bought my Saturn 2 as a regular customer. All opinions are mine.

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3D printing

What Screws Does Elegoo Saturn Use?

January 12, 2022January 12, 2022 | Jan Mrázek

There is a common question regarding damaged and lost screws on the resin tank on Elegoo Saturn. I have answered several questions for this on the Facebook groups, but those are not indexed by Google so you are out of luck when Googling. This is why I publish this really short blog post – so people can actually Google up the screws used on the Elegoo Saturn resin tank.

There are three screws:

M3x5 with countersunk head,
M4x10 with countersunk head, and
M4x10 with cylindrical head.
The vat is attached via M4x40 screws with overmolded cylindrical head.

This is it. I hope the search engines will pick this up well.

3D printing

Hand-on experiences with Mercury X Washing & Curing station and 15 USD must-have upgrades

October 24, 2021May 28, 2022 | Jan Mrázek

I’ve been in resin printing for over two years now. I have always refused to get a curing station. I disliked the available solution and was happy with my setup of several Lock’n’lock containers with IPA and a simple curing box made out of IKEA Lixhult. If you are wondering why I disliked the current solutions, read the ending of this post where I describe my dream machine.

However, my containers got small and I was considering getting bigger ones. It was at the time when Elegoo announced Mercury X pre-order. I thought “Ok, let’s give it a shot”.

I received my unit in September and I’ve been using it on a daily basis. Current experiences? It works pretty well and I am happy about it. I wouldn’t go back to my “dumb containers with IPA”. If you would like to see a full review that lists all the features and gives you the basic idea, please refer to other reviews: e. g., a nice review by Thomas Sanladerer.

In the rest of the post, I will show you what I dislike about the machine and how I improved it (at least a little) to make it suitable for heavy and convenient usage. Please note that overall I like the machine and I would advise my old me to buy it.

Problem #1: Only a single cleaning container

This is the biggest flaw of the machine – there is only a single container for IPA & cleaning. Do you ask why you would need more containers? It is more economical.

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