An (almost) perfect resin printing setup with one giant problem: Elegoo Mars 3 & Mercury X Bundle!

Resin printers are all pretty good these days, so they can work on getting the setups polished and ironing out oversights from previous generations. But they made their plans without considering the interests of their hardware partner Chitu - and now that everyone is dependent on their parts, they want a bigger slice of the cake.

The Mars 3 and Mercury X bundle were provided by Elegoo free of charge for this review. Elegoo did not have any say in how their machines were reviewed, nor did any money change hands for making this review.
Elegoo have assured that all preorder purchases have been shipped and the machines I received are the sames ones everyone will be getting.

Read the article to this video here:

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[MCXL]

It should be noted that Elegoo has released official support for Lychee slicer.

[Borgedesigns]

"having the parts warm when curing them, supposedly also helps with strength after curing" that sounds like a premise for a pretty interesting video for sure.

[RFi]

subscriptions of softwares that don't even need server usage are definitely a dealbreaker for most of makers.

[UncleJessy]

Great Review of the Mars 3 and wash and cure units! Also, much much appreciated bringing more attention to the Chitu Board/Slicer issues. One thing I'm excited to see coming out of this are multiple teams working on open source boards to directly compete with Chitu. Fingers crossed more changes are on the way.

[DomSculpts]

I will be skipping the Mars 3, and any other printer that has a "software locked" board.

[Derotron]

175€ every year is just disgusting and a deal breaker for me.

[ryanmast]

That's my Dragon!!! Thank you for printing and showing all the sexy close ups, Made my day!

[Forakus]

I really need a basic resin printer but I'm never signing up for a machine basically requiring 170$/year

[toastermon]

Interesting video!

Soft-locking a machine to a software subscription is a really bad idea for a number of reasons so hopefully there'll be an alternative sooner or later.

[mett]

At that price for chitu pro, if you really wanted it after your free year it might make more sense to buy a second one and both have 2 or flip the first one

[f.d.]

As much as I appreciate your videos and insights into the engineering side of things, I don't share your optimism on the purpose of cost optimization "... it means that Elgoo has more budget to spend elsewhere on the machine..." Um, yes and no: after 25+ years in marketing and product development, I can tell you that cost optimization is used to improve profits 99% of the time. Even if we consider the Mars 3 to be a "star" on the BCG-Matrix (Growth-market-share-matix) and thus in a category where you DO invest to harvest fat returns, cost optimization is the part that's financing the investment and NOT a mechanism that shifting the price-value ratio in a region that makes the product an exceptional deal (I know you didn't say that).

[antisk]

You get a like for 'almost yeeting your 3d printer across the room' - a brand new sentence

[thetable]

"Almost three freedom sized bottles of Coke." Yup, I LOLed.

[darksteel]

It is still hard to read your telepromter on the Mars3 :)

[pitanpainter]

Thanks for this, and for high-lighting the Chitu box licensing issue.
I'd been holding off buying a resin printer until I could order a Mars 3 (the early subscriptions are sold out as I write) .. now I can have another think about my options.

[RFC-]

1:10 - Amazing, the printer comes with voice recognition and is actually _printing his words_ as he speaks (left side of the image)!

[bruderdasisteinschwerermangel]

I can see Prusa taking over that market with an open source slicer within 2-4 years

[REDTEK]

I am new to 3D printing, I was dead set on buying this as my first printer until I saw this video. There is no way in hell I would ever buy a subscription like that. Hopefully I can find another printer somewhere else.

[olafb.]

That comparison of basic and pro Chitu would be awesome
The Mars 3 looks interesting, but as you said, the 2 (Pro) is really good too, for a decent price.

[mikereliford]

Today the Mars 3 Pro is compatible with Lychee 3.0 software so would imagine the Mars 3 is as well. This video is over a year old now so of course that is an eternity in the software world. That being said, if your only hang up with the machine is the software that problem has been resolved.