Back in February I finally started my journey into 3D resin printing. I bought a (surprisingly cheap) Elegoo Mars 2. Less than 200quid for a mono printer was a great deal at the time. The Mars 3 is out now, as is the larger Saturn, no idea what I’d buy only 7 months later!
First I printed out a few of the Fat Dragon Games models I’d previously printed on my Ender 3. The difference was staggering.
Ender 3 Pro 
Mars 2
Next I late pledged to an EC3D kickstarter and got a load of sci-fi models to print. I also found a few free star wars models I want to use in Legion (if I ever get to play).
Then at the end of July I decided to finally join a patreon. I want for One Page Rules, they’d sponsored a few content creator videos around that time and having seen what people were printing I decided I wanted in. Since then I’ve printed out a decent sized Mummified Undead army, and with more great models coming in October’s release I think it’ll keep growing.
To date I’ve printed 115 miniatures using a single bottle of resin costing about forty quid. The patreon is less than a tenner a month, the Kickstarter was a bit more, about 30 dollars I think. But value for money with a 3D resin printer is insane.
I should also say if you’re contemplating your first printer and thinking of going for FDM because resin is complicated, or you have an FDM printer and are worried about moving to resin, don’t be. Resin printing for me has been a factor of 10 more straight forward than FDM. I was constantly tweaking my Ender 3 trying to get decent enough settings for clean prints. In a resin printer there’s really only one mechanical aspect you need to focus on, and that’s levelling the build plate. Something I did every print on my Ender 3, and have done a total of 4 times on my Mars 2.
Clean up requires a process, but mine is pretty straightforward. Sensible safety precautions like gloves and a respirator as obviously a must, but same applies to a lot of what we do in this hobby.
Overall 3D resin printing is such a phenomenal tool, and my Mars 2 is easily my best hobby purchase of my 30+ years of doing this. It’s even encouraged me to paint more!
