Thank you for your video! It is vital now because there are nearly no videos about this printer yet. I'm about to buy it so I try to find as much information about it as possible.
Thinking of getting the pro version of this so nice to see a review even though its the standard version. First thing I find is odd is that when you hit home it goes all the way to the top first. My Saturn 8k doesn't.
Yeah, the Pro looks great! Going to a known home position is a fairly normal procedure during calibration/set-up for most precision machines. Just had a quick look on the Elegoo website, and it does seem to show there is a home position light (like the one at the top of the Z axis for the Mage), and it also seems to have a 'limit position switch', which presumably is like an emergency fail-safe in case it goes too far.
Some tips. Remove supports before curing. On models you slice yourself I would use many smaller supports with a shallower support depth into the actual model. Get you a little plastic bin to pre rinse your prints so you dont use so much iso. Great video too.
@@Swift3DPrinting when my wash station had a lot of resin in the ipa, my prints wouldn’t be very clean after the first go around. So I started using denatured alcohol and once my prints were removed along with supports, I would spray them with 99% ipa to make sure they were clean. Or ultra sonic cleaner with its heater up to 50c for small prints like minis
@@anthonyroberts6845 tried quite a few times. But ok minis and small detailed parts wouldn’t let go. But that’s probably something I can work on in the slicer to make super fine supports
Thanks for the vid i have one of these and i find that cured resin builds up in the vat after a print and you have to clean out the vat which is a pain after every print i hav noticed yours doing this
I have six printers 5 of which are great, the sixth, the mage 8k has never printed successfully, I can't see an option to set the base layer lift speed and I'm sure this is the problem, any ideas how to slow down the base layer lift?
Awesome video! I use a small heat gun when removing the supports, just a little bit of hot air will help to get those supports right off, even in odd areas. Be careful though, since to much hot air might burn the resin if you're heating for to long in the same area
I have a formlabs form 3 it is very expensive to run vat tanks are 150 usd and the thing uses formlab resin cartriges that might contain 1.5 liters or resin you guessed it 150usd again, thank you for this video I am going to buy on of these.
Ouch - that's pretty brutal pricing! At least with most resin printers you have freedom of choice over different resins, which helps keep the prices down! The resin I used in this video was £30 (down from £35), so around $37-45 per litre.
any advice on how to make mu cure and wash station work? i have the exact same station and it worked well now it just beeps at me constantly also does your mage 8k make a loud noise on prints? kind of like its sealing and then popping off?
Thanks for the review! Quick question, I just got mine today and feel like the printer is really loud when in idle. The moment it turns on the fan kicks in at full force and sounds pretty loud. Would you consider your printer to be loud or does it run quiet?
You're welcome! I agree, the fan is pretty loud at all times - I assume by the logic that you mainly only have it switched on during printing, so it is always filtering the air. I would say printing volume is not much different to fan volume. For me the volume is OK - I have it in a seperate room with the door shut, and I can't hear it in the next room, down the hall etc. (even at night when the house is silent if printing then). I imagine it could be considered relatively loud if you were sat right next to it though, so depends on the context!
Same here. Very noisy machines. I have an OG Saturn and usually print overnight. Last night tried that with the mage and oh.. Thats not happening again. I feel Creality really cut corners on tis machine in some areas to get some of the other features in the price point.
I'm setting mine up today. I try to level the bed, the home button sends to platform all the way to the top followed by two beeps and then never comes back down to the base. I searched around and haven't found any help. I may need to box this up and send it back. :(
Oh no! I've not had that on mine, and I've leveled the bed a few times, so don't have any suggestions on a fix unfortunately! Have you contacted customer service? (They are based in China, so they may respond at unusual times due to the time difference)
I bought this last week cant get it to print . I'm using elegoo 8k standard gray . I've tried all of the files on the USB key and nothing. It will go through the motion but nothing is on the built plate or in the vat
That's really odd. I've only tried the Creality Rigid Grey so far, and have had no print failures in my 4 prints so far. The three things I can think of off the top of my head is: 1) Have you done the build plate leveling process as I showed in the video (and described in the 'Quick Installation Guide')? If not, the build plate could be too far away to allow anything to cure. 2) What settings have you tried so far? For my prints I have found the following works: 1.8sec exposure time, 5mm lift height, 3mm lift speed, 1sec light off delay. 30sec bottom exposure time, 3 bottom layers. If you've tried those and they don't work, it may be that the Elegoo resins require a longer exposure and bottom exposure time. 3) Is the light on the printer working? If you tried running the printer with no resin in there, and no build plate, can you see the UV light turn on? You could also try the 'Clean' function for this, as that should turn on the light to cure the bottom layer of the resin vat, but without moving the built plate mechanism. If the light isn't working, or the build plate leveling/calibration isn't working, I would probably contact customer support.
Awesome, there are so few videos on this right now :) It's nice to see someone go through the whole unboxing and actual use of the machine. I think I am going to wait for the pro version because it's supposedly 4 times as fast at printing. How is the air filter on the machine?
I know - I was quite surprised, and that’s part of what inspired me to make one. Yeah, the pro looks great! It was out of stock when I ordered, and a little bit more than I was willing to spend at the time, as it’s around £200 more than the standard Mage. If I end up printing a lot and needing more capacity, I’d definitely consider getting a Pro! The air filter seems good! You do still get an odour from the resin during printing or if you leave it in the vat, but it does a good job of removing all the harmful fumes. I haven’t got my outlet connect up to anything, but if you were bothered by the smell you could connect up the supplied hose out the window or something. I’m fortunate to have a spare room in the house which I’m using, so the smell hasn’t really bothered me!
I had a different experience than Swift. Using the same resin, I had to to clear out of my office for a full 2 days before the smell fully dissipated. It was bad enough that I was really wondering what the heck the resin was doing to my lungs when walking in the room. I also had a secondary carbon heppa filter fan running in the closet along with it that seemed to do nothing. This was with the windows open and the filter on full blast mind you. Honestly, there are some additional filter settings I need to play with, but mine was defaulted to stay on the whole time with the lid closed and everything. My guess is this would not have been as bad if the lid was better sealed, and the printer gave you the option to run the fan as needed. The fan / filter just exacerbated the issue. There's no way to adjust the settings once the print is going as well. I now have a 16 foot 1-1/2" washer drain tube that I'm running to my window to blast the fumes at my annoying neighbors. I highly suggest getting this from the get go and avoiding the nausea. Also, PSA carbon only removes the smell. The fumes are likely still toxic, so wear a mask or blast it at those neighbors.
@@Democreous I agree it definitely smells despite the filter. I'm fortunate enough to have my printing setup in a spare room in the house, so I'm only going in there to print and do post-processing on the models. I try to have the window open when it's warm enough outside, and I have an air-brick in the wall which probably helps too! From what I understand, this is fairly common as an issue with resin printing (maybe also with FDM too, but I've never had one). General advice I've seen is to wear a proper dust/respirator mask when the resin is out in the room (not the cheaper medical ones).
if we retrack half less its allmost 2x faster. allmost bcoz layer allways take time. that can adjust too. easy calc if speed is 16mm/s and it move 16up and 16mm down every layer thats 2second. if one step take 3second light and 2 second move and we have 20000 layers its 27.7 hours if we move 8mm up 8 mm down and it take still 3second light and 1 second moving each layer 22.2 hours but in reality we can exposure around 1 second so this come 11.1 hours. more layers every millisecond count as hours lol
I definitely broke the sword off the first chance I got :D Thank you for covering this new printer! I received mine a few days ago and am still starving for content / reviews.
Haha - I've accidentally broken it off whilst parading it around to show people. I hit it quite hard on the sword when I was getting out the car and it snapped by the hilt - should be able to glue it back on though at least :D
The height of the print was 180mm, and on the default settings on the supplied file from Creality, it took 18 1/2 hours - but it can print much quicker than this! The default settings on the file from Creality featured a 1mm/s lift speed, an 8mm lift height, and a 6 second Light-Off delay in the settings. Through settings I've tested on other prints, the printer could actually produce this model in around 9-10 hours, so literally halving that time - there may be more scope for improvement on that too, but still learning and finding out what the limits of the printer are at the moment. The standard Mage can't print as fast as the Pro for a couple of reasons. Firstly is the light intensity: The normal Mage has a light intensity of 5000mW/cm2 (which is better than most competitor printers from what I can tell), where as the Mage Pro has a light intensity of 8000mW/cm2, so 60% more powerful. This means it can have a shorter exposure time to do the same amount of curing. Additionally, the maximum speed that the Mage seems to be able to do is 3mm/s for lift. The Mage Pro in Dynax mode looks like it can do 100mm/s (although this may have negative effects on print quality). In theory based upon Chitubox's recommendations for parameters and ignoring quality concerns, the Mage Pro could print the 180mm figure shown in around 3 hours.
Thanks for the review. I have an Anycubic M3. I would like to print faster. My pieces are on average 130mm, with a layer height of 0.075mm. Do you believe I can use the lift speed at 3mm/s?
What are the smallest prints you have made with this printer? Im interested in 32mm printing but the mage layers go down to .5 as the lowest, when printing 32mm .3 is best.
I just received my own Mage 8K, unboxed it, plugged in, and.... Nothing. Nada! Even though the red power switch light on the back at the power cable does light up, the screen does not come to life. Sent an email to customer service. Waiting...
Ah, that sucks! I'm assuming you did all the sanity checks like checking it was turned on at the wall and stuff? (I forgot to do that on mine and had a mini panic for a minute!) One thing to keep in mind with the customer service is that it's all based in China, so for me (in the UK) they are 6 hours ahead, so the response times can be a little unusual!
Hey, Is it resolved? because same thing happened to me I waited & followed up for 5days and the technical team advised me to open it up, the circuit plug from power to motherboard was unplugged. Hope this one helps you to resolve your issue.
Yes, it would be great at that! The resolution and accuracy of the prints is very high, so you would get a lot of detail. I’m hoping to print some DnD minis off soon to test and for a few friends 🙂
I've not had too much trouble with it in terms of usability, but it definitely lacks some features compared to Chitubox having had a play with that too. Pretty poor showing that they still haven't updated this 3 weeks after releasing the printers for sale.
I have asked lychee support and they are actively working on getting compatibility for the mage machines, trust creality to create a new file type that no one supports. Hopefully in the next week or so we should see the mage printers appear in lychee, but chitubox pro beta has the mage printers already and you get 3 months free with the standard mage but 12 months free with the pro. I have bought both models of mage as I feel they do 2 different jobs for me.
@@Kenny-jg8ldcan you explain why are they bad? Or your opinion is based on other youtubers review's? Cause i got it yesterday and i have printed 18 figurines without error and amazing quality they are on sale right now
Question for community: Any recommendations for American reviewers of 3d printers? It is just hard to understand the Brits and it seems the majority of videos are made by brits. I just have a hard time understanding British accents. I know, seems weird, 7th Gen Irish American family. Tired of having to keep a british to American dictionary and a calculator to convert the surrender math to English imperial. Im leaving a like on the videos for your effort but just want American videos.
I'm surprised to hear that - most I've seen are made by US content creators! A couple I can recommend that I've watched videos from are 'Uncle Jessy' and '3DPrintingPro' - I found their content really helpful. Also happy to try and explain/answer any questions if anything was unclear?
I live in Michigan and can try and help if you have any questions. I have only had my printer for about a week but it has been great. The only issues I have had are because of my image file, not the printer. I am using ANYCUBIC 3D printer resin for 8K which I bought off Amazon. I had used an Elegoo Mars 3 printer before and really like this new Creality Halot-Mage printer much better. I am still refining my printer settings and when I get them done I will try and put a video on here. Thanks
Thank you for your video! It is vital now because there are nearly no videos about this printer yet. I'm about to buy it so I try to find as much information about it as possible.
You're welcome - thanks for watching!
Thinking of getting the pro version of this so nice to see a review even though its the standard version. First thing I find is odd is that when you hit home it goes all the way to the top first. My Saturn 8k doesn't.
Yeah, the Pro looks great! Going to a known home position is a fairly normal procedure during calibration/set-up for most precision machines. Just had a quick look on the Elegoo website, and it does seem to show there is a home position light (like the one at the top of the Z axis for the Mage), and it also seems to have a 'limit position switch', which presumably is like an emergency fail-safe in case it goes too far.
m5s is way better and cheaper than the Mage pro
Some tips. Remove supports before curing. On models you slice yourself I would use many smaller supports with a shallower support depth into the actual model. Get you a little plastic bin to pre rinse your prints so you dont use so much iso.
Great video too.
Just ordered mine cannot wait to get it!!!!
I clean my prints before and after removing supports. As mentioned above a heat gun helps but use snips for the delicate parts.
Sounds interesting - what does washing it again after removing the supports do to improve the result?
@@Swift3DPrinting when my wash station had a lot of resin in the ipa, my prints wouldn’t be very clean after the first go around. So I started using denatured alcohol and once my prints were removed along with supports, I would spray them with 99% ipa to make sure they were clean. Or ultra sonic cleaner with its heater up to 50c for small prints like minis
A soak in hot water is my prefered, most supports fall off with near no pressure
@@anthonyroberts6845 tried quite a few times. But ok minis and small detailed parts wouldn’t let go. But that’s probably something I can work on in the slicer to make super fine supports
Thanks for the vid i have one of these and i find that cured resin builds up in the vat after a print and you have to clean out the vat which is a pain after every print i hav noticed yours doing this
I have six printers 5 of which are great, the sixth, the mage 8k has never printed successfully, I can't see an option to set the base layer lift speed and I'm sure this is the problem, any ideas how to slow down the base layer lift?
Awesome video! I use a small heat gun when removing the supports, just a little bit of hot air will help to get those supports right off, even in odd areas. Be careful though, since to much hot air might burn the resin if you're heating for to long in the same area
Thanks for the tip - will give it a go!
I put mine in hot water
@@markIburgess I do so too. They separate very easily and dont leave so many spots.
I have a formlabs form 3 it is very expensive to run vat tanks are 150 usd and the thing uses formlab resin cartriges that might contain 1.5 liters or resin you guessed it 150usd again, thank you for this video I am going to buy on of these.
Ouch - that's pretty brutal pricing! At least with most resin printers you have freedom of choice over different resins, which helps keep the prices down! The resin I used in this video was £30 (down from £35), so around $37-45 per litre.
the question is... can it go lower than 0.05 layer thickness? there are cheaper models which are capable of doing 0.02-0.01mm
any advice on how to make mu cure and wash station work? i have the exact same station and it worked well now it just beeps at me constantly
also does your mage 8k make a loud noise on prints? kind of like its sealing and then popping off?
Is that wash station the UW-01 or the UW-02 or UW-03 ????
Thanks for the review! Quick question, I just got mine today and feel like the printer is really loud when in idle. The moment it turns on the fan kicks in at full force and sounds pretty loud. Would you consider your printer to be loud or does it run quiet?
You're welcome! I agree, the fan is pretty loud at all times - I assume by the logic that you mainly only have it switched on during printing, so it is always filtering the air. I would say printing volume is not much different to fan volume.
For me the volume is OK - I have it in a seperate room with the door shut, and I can't hear it in the next room, down the hall etc. (even at night when the house is silent if printing then). I imagine it could be considered relatively loud if you were sat right next to it though, so depends on the context!
Same here. Very noisy machines. I have an OG Saturn and usually print overnight. Last night tried that with the mage and oh.. Thats not happening again. I feel Creality really cut corners on tis machine in some areas to get some of the other features in the price point.
what settings have you used movement wise not resin settings actual movement? having some issues and just wondered
I'm setting mine up today. I try to level the bed, the home button sends to platform all the way to the top followed by two beeps and then never comes back down to the base. I searched around and haven't found any help. I may need to box this up and send it back. :(
Oh no! I've not had that on mine, and I've leveled the bed a few times, so don't have any suggestions on a fix unfortunately! Have you contacted customer service? (They are based in China, so they may respond at unusual times due to the time difference)
I bought this last week cant get it to print . I'm using elegoo 8k standard gray . I've tried all of the files on the USB key and nothing. It will go through the motion but nothing is on the built plate or in the vat
That's really odd. I've only tried the Creality Rigid Grey so far, and have had no print failures in my 4 prints so far.
The three things I can think of off the top of my head is:
1) Have you done the build plate leveling process as I showed in the video (and described in the 'Quick Installation Guide')? If not, the build plate could be too far away to allow anything to cure.
2) What settings have you tried so far? For my prints I have found the following works: 1.8sec exposure time, 5mm lift height, 3mm lift speed, 1sec light off delay. 30sec bottom exposure time, 3 bottom layers. If you've tried those and they don't work, it may be that the Elegoo resins require a longer exposure and bottom exposure time.
3) Is the light on the printer working? If you tried running the printer with no resin in there, and no build plate, can you see the UV light turn on?
You could also try the 'Clean' function for this, as that should turn on the light to cure the bottom layer of the resin vat, but without moving the built plate mechanism.
If the light isn't working, or the build plate leveling/calibration isn't working, I would probably contact customer support.
Awesome, there are so few videos on this right now :) It's nice to see someone go through the whole unboxing and actual use of the machine. I think I am going to wait for the pro version because it's supposedly 4 times as fast at printing. How is the air filter on the machine?
I know - I was quite surprised, and that’s part of what inspired me to make one. Yeah, the pro looks great! It was out of stock when I ordered, and a little bit more than I was willing to spend at the time, as it’s around £200 more than the standard Mage. If I end up printing a lot and needing more capacity, I’d definitely consider getting a Pro!
The air filter seems good! You do still get an odour from the resin during printing or if you leave it in the vat, but it does a good job of removing all the harmful fumes. I haven’t got my outlet connect up to anything, but if you were bothered by the smell you could connect up the supplied hose out the window or something. I’m fortunate to have a spare room in the house which I’m using, so the smell hasn’t really bothered me!
I had a different experience than Swift. Using the same resin, I had to to clear out of my office for a full 2 days before the smell fully dissipated. It was bad enough that I was really wondering what the heck the resin was doing to my lungs when walking in the room. I also had a secondary carbon heppa filter fan running in the closet along with it that seemed to do nothing. This was with the windows open and the filter on full blast mind you. Honestly, there are some additional filter settings I need to play with, but mine was defaulted to stay on the whole time with the lid closed and everything. My guess is this would not have been as bad if the lid was better sealed, and the printer gave you the option to run the fan as needed. The fan / filter just exacerbated the issue. There's no way to adjust the settings once the print is going as well. I now have a 16 foot 1-1/2" washer drain tube that I'm running to my window to blast the fumes at my annoying neighbors. I highly suggest getting this from the get go and avoiding the nausea. Also, PSA carbon only removes the smell. The fumes are likely still toxic, so wear a mask or blast it at those neighbors.
@@Democreous I agree it definitely smells despite the filter. I'm fortunate enough to have my printing setup in a spare room in the house, so I'm only going in there to print and do post-processing on the models. I try to have the window open when it's warm enough outside, and I have an air-brick in the wall which probably helps too! From what I understand, this is fairly common as an issue with resin printing (maybe also with FDM too, but I've never had one). General advice I've seen is to wear a proper dust/respirator mask when the resin is out in the room (not the cheaper medical ones).
if we retrack half less its allmost 2x faster. allmost bcoz layer allways take time. that can adjust too.
easy calc if speed is 16mm/s and it move 16up and 16mm down every layer thats 2second.
if one step take 3second light and 2 second move and we have 20000 layers its 27.7 hours
if we move 8mm up 8 mm down and it take still 3second light and 1 second moving each layer 22.2 hours
but in reality we can exposure around 1 second so this come 11.1 hours.
more layers every millisecond count as hours lol
I definitely broke the sword off the first chance I got :D Thank you for covering this new printer! I received mine a few days ago and am still starving for content / reviews.
Haha - I've accidentally broken it off whilst parading it around to show people. I hit it quite hard on the sword when I was getting out the car and it snapped by the hilt - should be able to glue it back on though at least :D
Cool, What was the total height of print and How much time did it took? Does it have the same speed as Pro version?
The height of the print was 180mm, and on the default settings on the supplied file from Creality, it took 18 1/2 hours - but it can print much quicker than this!
The default settings on the file from Creality featured a 1mm/s lift speed, an 8mm lift height, and a 6 second Light-Off delay in the settings. Through settings I've tested on other prints, the printer could actually produce this model in around 9-10 hours, so literally halving that time - there may be more scope for improvement on that too, but still learning and finding out what the limits of the printer are at the moment.
The standard Mage can't print as fast as the Pro for a couple of reasons. Firstly is the light intensity: The normal Mage has a light intensity of 5000mW/cm2 (which is better than most competitor printers from what I can tell), where as the Mage Pro has a light intensity of 8000mW/cm2, so 60% more powerful. This means it can have a shorter exposure time to do the same amount of curing. Additionally, the maximum speed that the Mage seems to be able to do is 3mm/s for lift. The Mage Pro in Dynax mode looks like it can do 100mm/s (although this may have negative effects on print quality). In theory based upon Chitubox's recommendations for parameters and ignoring quality concerns, the Mage Pro could print the 180mm figure shown in around 3 hours.
Thanks for the review. I have an Anycubic M3. I would like to print faster. My pieces are on average 130mm, with a layer height of 0.075mm. Do you believe I can use the lift speed at 3mm/s?
IS THE CLEAN AND CURE MANDATORY? AND I LIKED THIS SETUP VIDEO WAAAAAY BETTER THAN THE ONE THE QR TOOK ME TO. THANK YOU.
Unfortunately yes because the resin is toxic and without the cure and clean it will not hold together and will also be still covered in resin
The axis of my printer came a bit crooked, im getting crazy layer lines due to it moving the whole plate side to side :S
Ah, that sucks. How have you got on with getting it repaired/replaced?
What are the smallest prints you have made with this printer? Im interested in 32mm printing but the mage layers go down to .5 as the lowest, when printing 32mm .3 is best.
I need your help
Happy to try and help - what is your problem/question?
I just received my own Mage 8K, unboxed it, plugged in, and.... Nothing. Nada!
Even though the red power switch light on the back at the power cable does light up, the screen does not come to life.
Sent an email to customer service. Waiting...
Ah, that sucks! I'm assuming you did all the sanity checks like checking it was turned on at the wall and stuff? (I forgot to do that on mine and had a mini panic for a minute!)
One thing to keep in mind with the customer service is that it's all based in China, so for me (in the UK) they are 6 hours ahead, so the response times can be a little unusual!
Hey, Is it resolved? because same thing happened to me I waited & followed up for 5days and the technical team advised me to open it up, the circuit plug from power to motherboard was unplugged. Hope this one helps you to resolve your issue.
will work for small wargames miniatures?
Yes, it would be great at that! The resolution and accuracy of the prints is very high, so you would get a lot of detail.
I’m hoping to print some DnD minis off soon to test and for a few friends 🙂
@@Swift3DPrinting not to mention you can print quite a bit.
Great video m8
the software that comes with the printer is so awful really need lychee to save the day and support this printer
I've not had too much trouble with it in terms of usability, but it definitely lacks some features compared to Chitubox having had a play with that too. Pretty poor showing that they still haven't updated this 3 weeks after releasing the printers for sale.
Terrible printer I advise no-one buy them
@@Kenny-jg8ld ? Why are they terrible
I have asked lychee support and they are actively working on getting compatibility for the mage machines, trust creality to create a new file type that no one supports. Hopefully in the next week or so we should see the mage printers appear in lychee, but chitubox pro beta has the mage printers already and you get 3 months free with the standard mage but 12 months free with the pro. I have bought both models of mage as I feel they do 2 different jobs for me.
@@Kenny-jg8ldcan you explain why are they bad? Or your opinion is based on other youtubers review's? Cause i got it yesterday and i have printed 18 figurines without error and amazing quality they are on sale right now
Question for community: Any recommendations for American reviewers of 3d printers? It is just hard to understand the Brits and it seems the majority of videos are made by brits. I just have a hard time understanding British accents. I know, seems weird, 7th Gen Irish American family. Tired of having to keep a british to American dictionary and a calculator to convert the surrender math to English imperial.
Im leaving a like on the videos for your effort but just want American videos.
I'm surprised to hear that - most I've seen are made by US content creators! A couple I can recommend that I've watched videos from are 'Uncle Jessy' and '3DPrintingPro' - I found their content really helpful. Also happy to try and explain/answer any questions if anything was unclear?
Turn on the captions and get your hearing checked.
I live in Michigan and can try and help if you have any questions. I have only had my printer for about a week but it has been great. The only issues I have had are because of my image file, not the printer. I am using ANYCUBIC 3D printer resin for 8K which I bought off Amazon. I had used an Elegoo Mars 3 printer before and really like this new Creality Halot-Mage printer much better. I am still refining my printer settings and when I get them done I will try and put a video on here. Thanks