Review of Elegoo Mars 5 Pro Resin Printer

A few months ago I obtained an Elegoo Mars 5 Pro Resin Printer, which is a smaller version of their latest Saturn printer. It utilizes a tilting vat for easier and faster FEP release, on-board memory for file storage, a USB port, a camera for active monitoring and time lapse videos, WI-FI for an additional method of file transfer and monitoring, and a laser etched build plate.

Most everything about the printer is good and it works rather well, but you do have to be more careful about drips since the tilting vat means the printer has a gap around the screen that resin can drip into. Make sure you use the plastic drip tray or make an accordion style protector out of tape. The build plate handle should be shaped differently for a better grip (though this isn’t too much on an issue if you place your gloved thumb under the lip of the build plate).

My only real complaint is that the printer does get too hot, like 130F in the summer while the lower layers are being created, and it only has a VERY small fan in it (I think it’s 20mm), which would still be entirely inadequate even if the printer had real ventilation holes, which is DOES NOT.

I strongly suspect they closed the thing up as best as they could to prevent UV light leakage, that could damage a person’s eyes, since the interior is really tiny and there’s a lot of light leakage inside, and there’s a fine mesh over the tiny tiny ventilation holes they do have. But that means that the chances of the parts overheating and wearing out too soon from excessive heat and uv light exposure is very high. However I came up with my own solution for the heat issue.

I examined the design and found that the back panel can be removed. And I discovered that the usb port is powered the entire time the printer is on.

Because the printer has on-board memory for file storage the usb port is only needed when loading new files onto the board, but with the wi-fi option files can be sent to the printer even without using the usb port.

So I just designed a new back plate to be printed on my FDM printer. To that new back panel I attached two large 80mm fans, which are powered by a USB plug. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IJ2J2K0

I set them up so that one fan is blowing air into the printer and one is evacuating the air. Then I plugged those into the printer’s usb port. Simple as.

To lessen UV light-leakage through the large fans I attached I designed my new back-panel to have a widely spaced mesh behind the fans and I put a finer pre-fabricated dust filter mesh between the fans and the panel.

Now the printer doesn’t get as hot and it cools down much quicker after the lights goes off between layers. I still keep the printer turned away from me to prevent any UV damage to my eyes, but I print in a separate ventilated room in a shop area I’m seldom in so that’s not much an issue in my case anyway. If it were, I could design baffles, which could hide the light entirely, and to these I could attach the fans, or I could use inline fans and a hose to hide the light.

Now I have noticed the Mars 5 Pro has a weaker light than my Elegoo Mars 2 Pro. Normally I use a layer height of .03mm, setting the bottom layer exposure time to around 40 seconds, and normal layers to 2.3 when I’m using Matter Hackers HM Build Resin, but for the Mars 5 Pro I have to bump these up a bit to 42 Seconds for Bottom Layers and 2.6 for Normal Layers, unless I’m printing something very light and small with a small cross section, or my supports will break off and the part I’m printing will fall into the vat.

I do think Elegoo needs to update the Mars 5 Pro firmware so that speed of the tilting action could be finely adjusted. While it helps to keep it set to the slower option the two options of slow and fast are simply not adequate; for while I can add extra time before or after the motion, which can help a little, I can’t adjust the speed of the tilting motion itself, and that would be the most helpful thing to be able to adjust to ensure a full release from the FEP film; especially when printing things with a larger cross section.

However as a tip: I’ve found that it’s best to position a part so that the larger cross-sectioned areas are near the back of the printer giving the tilting action some time to peel the FEP film away from the part more gradually.

I’ll add a section to this article later to explain how to level the build plate correctly. It’s not nearly as complicated as I’ve seen people making it. The standard adjustment screws work fine.