Dramatically Improve the Performance of Your Elegoo Mars with an LED Array Retrofit

The vast majority of consumer 3D printers on the market today utilize the fused-filament fabrication (FFF) printing process, because it is affordable, reliable, and efficient. But, thanks to rapidly lowering printer prices, resin 3D printers have started to gain serious traction in recent years. While FFF 3D printers are still the better option for most people, resin 3D printers are usually capable of printing finer details and are ideal for small models like figurines. The Elegoo Mars is one of the most popular resin 3D printers at the budget end of the market. Jan Mrázek has been working tirelessly on mods for the Elegoo Mars, and has a new guide on how to dramatically improve the performance with an LED array retrofit.

Most budget resin 3D printers, including the Elegoo Mars, cure the photosensitive resin in layers using UV light that is masked by an LCD screen. The resulting quality isn’t quite as good a traditional laser stereolithography, but it is more affordable and less delicate. LCD screens themselves are transparent, and resin printers like the Elegoo Mars simply turn on black pixels that act like shutters to only allow UV light through where the layer needs to be cured. That light comes from an array of UV LEDs, which is what this modification focuses on. The theory is simple: increase the power output of the LEDs and you reduce the time needed to cure the resin. Each layer is printed more quickly and the total time to complete a part is lowered. In this case, Mrázek claims a 3-4x speed increase as well as an improvement to precision.

The obvious question is “why didn’t Elegoo just do this themselves?” The answer is cost savings. These LEDs are more expensive, require a beefier power supply, and get hot, which necessitates the use of additional cooling. But, if you’re willing to spend the money for this mod, it should be worth your while. The new array contains 28 individual UV LEDs. Those are backed by a massive heat sink with a pair of fans for cooling. To avoid light bleed and improve precision, Mrázek 3D-printed special lenses for each LED that contain the spread of light as much as possible. Mrázek was able to get the layer cure time down to just one second, but the heat eventually caused his LCD to fail. He was forced to reduce the LED power output by half, but this is still far better than the original LED array’s output and allows for much faster printing.