Alkmaar, Nederland. December 2026. Beginning with hope.
It took a while to get a full build plate, the Saturn having a much bigger one than the Mars. I decided to print the figures that had last failed on the Mars, I believe due to the cold in the garage. I managed to fit 20 figures on the build plate. These were Piano Wargames Wurttemburger infantry.
I had to purchase more resin, for this printer I chose Elegoo 8K ABS v3.0 in the colour, Space Grey.
I'd run a calibration set using the Cones of Calibration and settled on a 2.0 second exposure time, and on December 29, I ran my first real print on the machine. After a couple of hours, I was ready to see the result.
Imagine my surprise and glee when all the models printed perfectly.
The build plate is big and its design means there's plenty of resin trapped on top of the bottom section. Not the most elegant design to be honest. I then spent a good 10 minutes struggling to remove the prints from the build plate. They were seriously attached. Fortunately I managed to remove them without breaking any.
Line infantry officer with General Vandamme's horse (I printed the wrong one).
A selection of the Wurttemburg line infantry.
With that success behind me, I quickly compiled another build plate of the remaining Wurttemburgers needed for the wargame unit. The next day, I set off a print run to produce the next 23 items. One of the advantages of the new printer is it connects via WiFi and has a mobile app that allows me to monitor the printing via the AI camera positioned inside the printer. Unfortunately, the print was only 1110 layers tall, which meant I never got to see how the print was going until it was too late. I noticed after 2.5 hours that nothing was attached to the build plate. Not a hint of a model.
I decided to clean the vat and try again. Another 2,5 hours later and exactly the same result. Now the printer has what it calls an auto-levelling feature, and unlike with the Mars, I didn't level the build plate in the beginning. I suspect that all the force I was using to try and remove the prints from the plate meant it was no longer level.
I manually levelled the plate and ran a Cones of Calibration test once more. This printed fine, so the plate must be level. However, my next attempt will need to wait until next year.