Welcome back to my little dimension, after talking about what is 3D printing I shall share my experience with my elegoo saturn printer, its not been a fun experience let me tell you!
Where to begin….. I got the printer sometime in March 2022 quite excited about getting a 4k printer with a bigger capacity, soon afterwards the 8k saturn 2 was announced, annoyingly. However, I got my printer and for the most part it’s been great and when it works it’s been working brilliantly, but that’s the issue…when it works. I’ve had almost everything replaced in this printer due to one accident with a flaw in the printers design which is quite a common area to fail on all elegoo models which I came to learn shortly afterwards.
I was doing a print and part of it failed but I had also noticed my vat was completely empty after which isn’t normal as I like to keep mine topped up between prints. I soon discovered the plastic FEP had been punctured by a previous failure, a puncture so small I couldn’t spot it, it was only under pressure would it actually leak and push resin out the hole and onto the screen itself. The screen is usually protected by some cheap black electrical tape is the best way to describe it in all honesty and spotting all the resin that had started to cure onto the screen thanks to the constant uv exposure it had all stuck together, so I ordered a new screen and once it had arrived I proceeded to swapping them out.
Only once I had opened the case I found uncured resin pouring out of the bottom screw holes and I knew then, this was worse than it seemed….the motherboard was soaked, but getting to it was difficult due to some of the resin curing over some of the screw holes holding it down, a night well spent getting that out. So I messaged elegoo and told them what happened, I got a new screen and motherboard for free under warranty, woohoo!
So unscrew the case, unscrew the screen, unhook everything connected to the motherboard and then unscrew the fans and remove them completely just to replace the new motherboard and screw everything back in, however there was those tiny awkward connections that are paper thin to slide into sockets and what not, they are super fun to play with. Plugged everything back together booted it up. No response from the touch screen, back onto elegoo and I got a new screen sent under warranty.
So once the screen arrived I had to unscrew and unplug everything again and even remove the uv light this time only to find more uncared resin and the answer to why I had such difficulty with those push in connections they were stuck to the base of the printer mixed with resin so back onto elegoo to push my luck for new ones, again under warranty so I lucked out! I didn’t put the printer back together this time, I left it in 50 pieces and away from the kids.
Bare in mind each part took 10-20 days to arrive so its been about 2 months by this point with no working printer and my wanting to print section only growing, today I think it’s around the 160gb mark of files. I need a new hobby. Back to the printer! I put the new connections in, put in the touch pad, and rebuilt the printer, time to test print so I done a tank clean just to check everything worked, DEAD UV LIGHT. By this point I had the will to live with this printer but back onto elegoo I went and another uv light was supplied under warranty.
Another 15 or so days and the lamp arrived, time to take it all apart, AGAIN! And replace the uv lamp with the new one. So here I was an empty husk of a printer I made sure there wasn’t a scrap of debre jnside this case before putting it all back together. Test the tank! Uv light works i was golden I thought so I’d try the rook print and see how it went.
This is where my current problem has come from…. the limit switch, limit switch? You ask , we’ll it’s the unit that tells the arm the height and depth limit of the lifting arm, it wasn’t working. I watched the arm lower and as it hit the 0 position or print position if you like, it just let out this horrible grinding noise as the motor was still trying to wind the plate down into the printer, I quickly cancelled the print and the build plate started going up, and up, and up out the top of the printer but it seemed to have a limit stopping it from just coming out the top completely but it was still grinding and trying to!
I can’t remember exactly what I done here but I think I reset 0 position and tried another print this time the grind only going on for a a second before the printer continued to print, so I thought it’s working let’s, move on and print something, probably NSFW or something else irrelevant,and it was successfully doing so until Wednesday 6th Jamury 2023 it wanted to keep going down and down. The limit switch had gone but this time I was truly gone, reset the 0 position but it ,ade no difference amd it kept going down and just letting out this horrible grinding noise but not stopping or coming back up for air, and typically on the same day I get two £25 orders on ETSY! It’s like they knew it was happening just to wind me up.
Despite all the parts needing replaced, due to a small silly accident I’ve learned quite a bit about the machine and how it’s relatively simple to just swap prices out. I think I’d still have another saturn Despite this as the extra build volume and size has been incredibly handy for some of the prints I’ve done.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my rant and maybe learned something to avoid in the process I’d be happy! Thank you for reading
Adam.
No Rerolls 
1 Comment