Saturn 4 Ultra 16K Review

Hello and welcome to my channel I'm Lincoln and today we're going to be unboxing reviewing this printer

right here it's the Elegoo Saturn 4 Ultra 16K now this thing was not perfect out of the box but I

got it running and printing beautifully and it really is not hard to do it just takes a little

elbow grease and we'll get into that in the video now if you want to know how to fix the printer you

don't want to you're not worried about the rest of the video and the intro and everything I'll

have the timeline broken up so you can just skip to whatever section you want to go take a look at

all right let's get into this because this thing is a great printer and FYI I was not sponsored

by Elegoo I bought this with my own money so let's get into it all right as I'm unboxing

this printer you're just going to see that this is packaged really well this is the front of it

right here with your touchcreen and then on the side you notice there's no longer Wi-Fi antenna

you have the DC input USB and your power switch and on the back really the only thing notable is

the port for your exhaust fumes that red and black wire you won't have that's for my resin

lapse cable that I made and on the other side just the vent and that's about it so here I'm showing you

that the little nondescript box do not forget to uh take that out and keep it because it has

your drip tray in it if you want to use it I don't use it um I use a silicone tray instead which I

prefer this one is just like I said it's really well packed and they had everything in there the

toolkit kind of all your basic tools the uh spatula and really the only useful thing in

there even the USB drive it did not last for very long it it only lasted about two weeks

all right don't forget to peel all these screens off and of course the the actual LCD screen and

the touchcreen too so here I'm just picking the language and I unboxed this in my kitchen so I

could hook up the Wi-Fi because I don't have Wi-Fi where I normally have any of my printers pretty

easy to do now here was kind of the first hiccup and you'll see that the z-axis checks out and when

it gets down to the x-axis it stops and doesn't it just gives the explanation point so that was

when I kind of was like already I've got problems with this printer it worked out okay though um so as

this hits you'll see it in just a second you know it was it was sitting there for a while trying to

get the X to go and it just wouldn't which is if you're unfamiliar with this printer that's

the part that makes this printer go up and down for the tray for the peel so it just asked for

a system update and that's what I did and as soon as I did that it had me turn the power off

turn the power back on and it did it finished it's update and did another system test actually two

of them and then it was finished so I've not had any other problems had this printer for about 2

and a half weeks now and no more issues so here it goes through the second time and boom as soon

as you hear that motor kick the rest of it goes uh lost the footage well I didn't lose it it was

just terrible footage for doing these uh taking these out and replacing them with the knobs so

in your toolbox you'll have the knobs to replace for your resin tank so throw those in and you're

ready to go now on here this is just me just reminding you peel off all these screens off

everything because they have a protective film on everything and this is just a quick screen test to

see what how it does and looks spectacular ow you notice here you got the Max and Min line and

even that yellow sticker in the front tells you if you're using the heater you need to keep the resin

between those two lines I have a feeling at um as high as this thing goes because it gets pretty hot

that you don't want to run that resin low it's going to probably overheat the screen so just

make sure if you can see the Min and the Max lines then you know that you're you have the

tray oriented correctly and if you're not sure I'm pointing at the five holes in the

screen area along with the two points for your heater contacts that this sits really well and

I'll demonstrate here in just a second that you know if you don't set it in there correctly it's

it's rocks a little bit more than it should so it makes it easy to uh put the tray on and

not worry about it because with a regular tray it wouldn't matter so here if you put it on and it's

backwards it's going to be it's see it wiggles a lot more because it's just not settled in place

there's only a couple pins in place so just ensure that you can see the Max Min lines in the back

back when you set the resin tray in place and this might as well just junk that thing and I

was just using a silicone baking tray works way better for this all right in the settings you go

to accessibility and this is where you can turn on the tank heating now the tank heating is usually

on and then the other preheat you just want to make sure it tells you again keep the resin

between the lines um it's going to try and get to 30C the only other thing is if it loses power

and comes back on um you would have to come back and turn that on now you notice there too you can

also turn the light on and off for the camera in that same menu now for anybody that argues

that you really don't need resin heating it's like you can see the temperature of my shop is really

cold so having that heater essential and that's just the camera and the light which for me is

useless I did actually want to use this um to be able to do time lapses but finding out that you

know it had to was Wi-Fi only so if you're looking for that and it's Wi-Fi only it's not going to

work for you all right and here just showing you the new wings they put on there and the one-handed

operation of putting the build plate on and off is so nice I love it I also really like the pour

spouts they work really well now I have noticed you get resin underneath those little caps so I

usually when I go to dump the resin out I will pull that off just to keep it out of the way

so much easier to clean now here's where we're going to fix the first issue with this printer

there's just not enough adjustment and use a 6 mm washer and I put two on each corner and

you'll see where I demonstrate you want to make sure that those washers slide up and down

on that little chrome post on the inside and it works great I also uh recommend that you probably

you know you tighten all the way down to the top of that tube then back it off probably three full

turns I only did two and I was able to get it adjusted but three turns would have made

it much easier to get adjusted for you so just go around and slip on two washers I tried one

at first all the way around and it was okay but I still still didn't have the adjustment

and it I got it but it was really hard to get the paper adjusted and even then I could tell

that there was still an issue as many of you have probably seen on other videos the center

of the plate is higher than the ends of the plate where the screws are so in the end we're

going to end up taking that really nice fancy finish off with some sandpaper and when you do

I don't have any I have not had any more print failures that are an issue with a printer and

not with my supports so I have to say that's it really does work well and I'll I'll show you that

in just a little bit so here I'm you know backing off two full turns but like I said I would I would

say probably go three turns instead it would just work much better all right so here we're going to

level this for the first time and with this it you know it takes a little time it goes up and

comes down so the gist of this is you just need to adjust this once you've done anything to this

you want to really adjust it the first time you use it and I did with the paper so this

is the second adjustment I I did on this printer just to make sure that I had this all set like I

wanted and it shows you on the screen put four pieces of paper on and each corner of the screen

and I didn't really show it here but I should have that the center of the build plate at this point

is still pretty high compared to the sides and I really saw that it was about 12 thousands which doesn't

seem like a whole lot but that's 20 I think 96 microns or 280 microns which come out to almost

six layers on your build plate so think about that if you have a high spot on your build plate that's

only 12 thousands and like I said that's not a lot but you're actually losing contact with all of your

burn-in layers none of them are going to properly fuse to the build plate like they should and it's

it's just enough that it's an issue so here is pretty cool the manual leving leveling it'll show

you this graph as it goes up comes across and shows you know how much pressure it's applying

and it'll get to a certain point that it likes and then it runs across the side and then it's

done so that's about it it's pretty simple you just want to make sure that once you've done

that you're just adjusting the paper so that all of the paper slides out of the same pressure and I

really I had really noticed on this left side that it really seemed like it the build plate itself was

a lot lower it was a lot higher in the center and kind of somewhere in between on the right

side where where I'm at right now so I kind of knew right off right off that I had an issue

with the build plate but I just wasn't sure I wasn't really sure how bad it was at the time yet

and this one I really wish I had shown on camera because I did try it I slid a piece

of paper across the front and it was tight on the edges and then would you could get to the

middle and it would you could basically just take it out slide it back in and then go to

the ends where they were tight so that tells you it just the the build plate is just not

flat and even here I think this is where I ended up

like getting a piece of paper trimmed off in there yeah you see it right there in the

corner it was so tight in the corner that I dig out that little piece of paper so anyhow

this is where I have the build plate leveled it's supposedly level and it should print

perfectly and it just wasn't the case I had an issue with the center back of the build plate

not adhering properly all right so here's another point it's this is kind of a midsize printer so

remember you're going to need a lot more resin one bottle as you can see pretty much just

gets you right up to the minimum line so have another one nearby because you're going to need

more and here we going to show you how to do the calibration go into the menu and you can

choose between four six or eight and it's a little confusing because your plate so here

I have it labeled where it would be so the back left corner is always one and the front

right corner would be four six or eight so pretty easy to see and this is what happened

out of most of my initial tests you can see there's just no adhesion and it's only at

the very bottom there's a little strip of where it was adhered like all the rest so

it ended up being that right in between those two Center test plates there's a high spot and

then two low spots and I'll show that in a little while when I sand the plate and you know the first

successful test in that spot was 35 seconds which it was pretty brittle so here I'm going to make

it flat I got a piece of MDF some sandpaper and it took it took me about 30 minutes and I

got this thing nice and flat and you'll see just after a few strokes why those ends were

so hard to level those two sides on the left were extremely high and I'll flip it around

and do figure eights and circles and back and forth each direction keep this thing nice and

flat and it's you know it was tedious but it was well worth it because I have not had any issues

with this thing adhering anything to the build plate since the only thing I've had an issue

with is and I'll show that in a few minutes where I had a few failures and it was simply

my fault because I used auto supports and I knew better but I just wanted to try them out again

and Lychee and see how they did and there you can see just this strange weird wavy pattern on

the ends and it's basically just however they decided to machine these whether it was a fly cutter or

if it was just a big sander but it would have to be a round one and you'll see the pattern

a little bit later it's just showing you the back of the plate there and sanding it where

it has this circular pattern right in the center and it's lower than the rest of the plate so and

that back section is the darkest right there and as this gets sanded further down you'll see um

the differences so that's a fly cutter and that's what how it would be used in a mill and that's how

I I'm guessing they did these with a large fly cutter so whether or not it was it was just they

were trying to use the powder coat to fill in the gaps of an imperfect flat plate so I just

kept going and at this point I probably could have stopped right here but I wanted it to just

go perfectly flat so I just kept at it and it was almost there and it's right here that's it it took

me about 30 minutes and I had a perfectly flat plate grabbed a piece of 120 gave it a few figure

8's just to knock all the high spots down and at this point I do a couple more things to the build

plate but they were completely optional they're just for me because I like to know exactly where

my test plates are or test parts are but that's a perfect finish for anything to adhere to you know

some 120 80 and then down to 120 and it's just a nice Satin finish so gave it a good bath washed

off all the grit and grime that was on it from sanding it and you would think I took a lot of

material off but there was just a very small pile of sanding dust now you'll see when I get done

leveling this out and this was even still with only one set of washers on and I did redo it with

two two washers at each corner to give me a little more room to adjust cuz this one I just got it it

but it was pretty tight to get it all done but you can see here now I can slide that paper all the

way across the front it's the same tension all the way across so after this I had wonderful success

with printing so this is the just showing you the very last one where I went all the way down to 20

seconds on the build plate and I'll show you here just a second which side is the back so that's the

back side and it's easy to remember because it's the one the side of the plate that has a notch

in it on the top and you can see that one has full adhesion now compared to what it was like

earlier and they're all nice and even and all the same so I mean anybody can say what

they want about having to sand your build plate and truthfully you know if you pay this much for

a printer I would expect it not to be an issue but that's just the what it it is so I started

out with 30 seconds and worked my way down to 20 and decided that was enough and with these

I think I was still at 20 seconds and then after this I decided just for safety sake I went up on

my burn-in layers to 22 seconds but here with my exposure test I was able to get to 1.8 seconds

was a perfect exposure now this is completely optional this is just me being a little ADD

I want to know exactly no matter which way I flipped the plate where a test is coming from

what part of the plate and what number it is and what exposure setting so you totally don't have

to do this you're just going to know that the side with that notch in the top of the top of

the build plate on the plastic part is the back side and the back left is going to be number one

always so depending on how many you do but I just wanted to make it a lot easier for me and then

since all of the the uh Sharpie is going to come off the first time I wiped this with alcohol I

went ahead and just dimpled on the very outside of the plate which is never going to affect anything

I'm not doing machining parts so I don't mind putting these little tiny dimples in there so

I know exactly where all of my test pieces are coming from all for exposure tests and bottom

exposure test so hit it with a little bit of 120 again just to knock all those little high spots

down and you'll see even when I fill this build plate up to like full capacity the build plate

is actually larger than the exposure area of the printer so I decided at this point it was time

to try you know a little bit larger size mini so I had sculpted this in Nomad Sculpt decided

to give it a go printing it and just see how it did and it printed printed beautifully no issues

and even without using any anti-aliasing on this the only spot I could see was on the

very back where there were any lines at all I mean this this printer prints so clean it really does

it's nice I don't know that the 16k makes a huge difference over 10 or 12 but you know just the

smoothness of this print you can see right there that there's just a little bit of lines in the

print so you know if you're thinking about this printer or you already have it and you're having

issues you know I recommend standing on the base plate and giving it a shot so here I decided that

I wanted to print a whole uh pile of minis on here I went to one page One Page Rules and

printed off their fantasy set and printed all of them at once and right here is where I would have

had a failure on that one that I just pulled off that larger one and all of the prints have

printed really well and stuck well so here I'd use the tank cleaning feature and super nice to

use but I realized that after I did that I should have cleaned the vat out just to wipe everything

down all right so here I realized when I was putting the new membrane in that I did

not line up the holes for the heater so simple enough just take all the screws out again and

flip it around so at least everything lines up so you don't have extra holes in the sheet so

easy enough just flip it around and just make sure that if when you do replace that you have

that lined up perfectly so here I tried to do um Auto supports I had had the bottom exposure at

22 seconds and just just for safety sake because I know there's a lot of suction pressure on all

this you know the suction force is the real deal so it wasn't it wasn't the problem with the bottom

and then on the second one I went into the menu and changed the exposure to two seconds and for

whatever reason it just made everything super hard and brittle I don't know what it did but

don't do that don't go into the menu just go back into your slicer and here I resupport it

with 1.8 exposure and it came out perfect now the spot I highlighted was a missing uh base that I

just missed when I did the uh put up put these all on so that wasn't a a problem with the exposure

or anything with the printer of failure I just forgot to put it on there totally my

fault so these all turned out nice and flat beautiful and I was just I had to go and support

them myself and you can see how much suction is on the bottom of that plate all at once and no

issue so if you're going to have an issue that would have been on something like this probably

you know especially if you get up midway so then I did a nice time lapse of a dragon I found online

I'll put the link in for this if you want to print this guy super cool and this is way small because

it's actually meant to be a several piece and I put it all together all the pieces together

Nomad sculpt and turned out really nice and then here's the rest of this guy with all the minis and

that's about it really you know that's this is an excellent printer it's got a couple hiccups

just like any printer has a few issues here and there I don't see any reason to have it you know

not like this printer for some reason or another I mean it really does a great job printing it just

you know the Elegoo is pushing them out a little too fast I think and just not doing a good job

with their base plates or the build plates and making sure they're flat all right I hope you

guys found this video helpful I know there's a lot of information I've thrown you all at

once if you'd like to learn more about digital sculpting go visit the rest of my channel and

learn how to use Nomad Sculpt to print anything you want a sculpt all right I'll see you next time