Resin 3D Printers don't NEED inbuilt heaters (TESTED) 

The rabbits add so much. Thanks for being awesome.

I used a brewers belt, but just wrapped it around the cover. I ran a cheap digital thermometer inside the cover and the internal temp went from 15 degrees to 27 degrees. I could then heat whichever printer I was using. The only downside was that the cover did become a little cloudy where the belt made contact.

Proof the internet is watching, this video appeared in my recommendations the same day I ordered a blower heater from AliExpress as its substancially colder here in NZ over winter (single digits is the norm) and the outdoor room where the printer is can get close to that overnight and still not clear 15c during the day. Im glad to see a simple but well preformed test to show the benefit of warm resin and im hoping my old Saturn (original, g1, Saturn 1 😕) can be made useful in these cold months. Thanks

Hmm i might get a belt for my mars3 pro.. Your coldest night... At 7 degrees is an average day in Ireland 😂

Our northern hemisphere viewers must be laughing their heads off with Aussies calling 10deg c "cold"

I live in Australia and I have found here that heating the resin with a hair dryer first works well enough for short prints like minis

Where I live, in winter, we get below 5 degrees. What I do is heat the resin bottle in warm water and heat the plate with boiling water before printing, then I cover the printer with a towel. To date I have had no problems with that method.

I live in Northern Canada and I use an old gutted mini fridge and a cheap $30 space heater to keep my resin printer warm. It’s in my garage which gets pretty cold and I have no problem maintaining at least 20 degrees. It can get down to negative 40C here but I haven’t tested it at that temp.

Always love the videos. I appreciate your sound approach to tests, too!

I'm in Ireland, almost at the northern tip, so my garage drops to below freezing in the winter, before buying the chitu heater the resin was so viscous my single rail mars 4 DLP had difficulty lifting from the vat when doing initial layers, making horrible grinding noises, once I installed the heater I have had next to zero print failures, I keep it at the factory default 35 degrees, bonus feature is that the prints are easier to remove from the warm build plate.

Can't wait to see your review of the s4 ultra and the heater. I haven't seen anyone talk about the heater yet, elegoo also released a resin detergent the other day, that could make for an interesting video down the line too!

Given enough preheat time with the build plate near the bed, the brewer's belt is a great low-cost option. The reason blowers work a bit better for the early bit of printing is because they also heat the build plate. $60 feels steep for what the Chitu blower is, but I guess that's all in the eyes of the beholder.

This was brilliant! Great editing, great content! Keep it up!!

As an Aussie I can't thank you enough for this, I had not realised till recently how much temp affected printing and was then stumped on good ideas to increase heat as I had no way to economically heat the vat. Please do that Elegoo heater, I do have one on pre-order as I had ordered the Saturn 4 but i do have another printer that I definitely will be using a fermenter belt for.

I just got a slim desktop heater off amazon for half the price of ones "designed" for 3d printers. It's worked great for 18 months and coupled with thermostat temp control unit it's still less than either of the branded options. I did try the belt warmers and it sucked ass, annoying to clean your vat and I do get to below freezing temps in the winter and it could not keep up. The only thing to keep in mind with the blowers is that it's the ambient temp in the machine, not the temp of the resin itself which will always take longer to heat up than the surrounding air.

Thank you for this great info!

I've had the same kind of mixed results with a brewer's belt - better than nothing, but there is a real lack of control. One setting on many (for more cash you can get some control over voltage), they have no thermostat, so IF you can control the voltage, you'll need to find a way to measure temp (unless your fancy printer does it for you)... it's not a great solution if you are like me, and part of the fun of the hobby is precision. I preordered that elegoo heater rather than order an existing one, as it seemed like the smallest simple unit and I don't need a heating option until late fall anyway. I have high hopes for it and will def check out your video on it.

I had a fermentation belt wrapped around my vat with a 3d printed holder that pressed it up against the vat. Was a pain to get in and out but kept it snug. I used a temperature controlled outlet that had a probe that I kept in the resin vat itself and it worked great throughout the winter. Was very fiddly to take on and off but having back to back prints with no failures meant that I didn't have a reason to. I used to have a heat fan inside an enclosure but that felt really sketchy since those heaters are explicity stated to not run without supervision or in an enclosed space.

I don't even have a 3d printer but I love your vids

God this was so well edited

Great video as always.

I use a heating mat originally intended for plants that I attached to the (inside) cover of my humble Mars 2 Pro. It has a built in limit (and thermometer) of 30°C after that it will stop working and start again if it goes below that. The advantage is that it heats the whole inside of the printer in an even way since it is the size of the whole cover of the Mars 2 Pro and it will heat the build plate and the vat with the resin. I generally let it run 1 hour before printing and the lowest I went was 12° or 15° C. It cost me something like 30 € and once installed with double sided tape, it stays in place with no problems but I could take it out easily since it's taped and not glued.

I’m experimenting with the Anycubic heater. I think an advantage of chamber heaters is that they keep the build plate warm when preheating.

Thank you for this video. I got my first resin printer in the January-February time frame and I was having a lot of issues at 35-40 degrees Fahrenheit. I did eventually get the printer to successfully print some models because I’m stubborn but have been looking into different heating options for next winter.

Great vid, I ordered a brewers belt for my Saturn 4 Ultra, but didn't stop to think "will this work with the tilting vat". So when you try the Saturn 4 ultra, give it a go putting the brewers belt on it for us viewers, might save someone $12 if it doesn't fit.

Have 2 of the Chitu Heaters in my Saturn 3 Ultras. Work great would recomend that you buy a back up power supply. I've already had one blow out so now have 2 backups. Also the weather stripping works great just cut it into sections for a better adaptation and adhere it with some silicone. I use an infinite mix cycle with the heater to keep the resin ready to go.

I saw the belt solution on another video and I implemented also adding a cheap AliExpress electronic thermostat to keep it at 23c and had no temp issues since.

Ooo. I had hoped my mini heater would come in with my Ultra 4. I haven’t been printing as it’s been too cold without it here. They told me August is when I can expect to receive my mini heater :(. I thought about the brewer belt, but I’m dubious because of the tilting Vat. Curious what your thoughts are, I’m sure I’ll see it in the video as well later. But I’ll pull the trigger now if you give me the thumbs up. Also curious if you’ve thought about potentially making a print to enclose the build plate so we don’t have as much resin cleanup, or if that’s probably a no go, due to the spring mechanism.

I built my own heaters like these ones 3 years ago. They still work fantastically. The heat bend is not ok if you need to be efficient.

i JUST recently bought the Chitu blower, and havent had a chance to try it. however, i knew it was going to work, because i used to have just a bog-standard small space heater blow at my Mars 3, and i would prop up the lid so the vent system i have installed (the once in a six side system) would suck sir in from under the lid, effectively warming the inside of the printer, and that mcgyver system worked just fine. had i known about the fermentation belt, i may have started with that, because i love being cheap. also, had i known Elegoo made their own, i may have bought that one instead as well, since i have an elegoo printer

I actually got a first generation heater addon like a year ago had to drill ahole in the acrylic top, it worked great until the fan died, so it keeped heating to dangerous temperatures and it almost burned up... but again for the while before that It worked really great, it had a temp censor and you could determine the temp etc. and was really small, smaller than all what you showed (minus the belt)

I also use a brewer belt, but for a couple of extra bucks I added gadget for the socket that reads the temperatur with a sensor and can turn the belt on and off. I usually glue the sensor to the top of the vat and tell it to keep it between 23-26°C, thus taking into account that its reading the ambient heat just over vat. This method has yielded amazing results and I feel its better then the rather "brute force-belt always on" solution.

Love the rabbits! Picked up the brewers belt based on the recommendation (2 degrees at night will be an interesting test)

I have two of the Chitu Systems heaters for both of my Saturn 3 Ultra. I find they do work really well, but my machines are in my basement where the ambient temp is typically above 65 F but rarely over 70 F. I do let the resin pre-heat for an hour or so before starting prints or after refilling post-print before starting a new print. I'm looking into a self adhesive heating belt for my Mars 5 Ultra that is on pre-order due to the space limitation inside of that unit.

Ah I literally just ordered the Chitu systems fan 2 days ago. Rip affiliate link

Try printint something higher... something that stick outside of vat. When I am using inside heater with fan, models get soft and while peeling off theu deforms creating something like layer lines. So I would stay with vat heater as its heating only resin.

I used the belt with the m3 premium in canada in single digit negative temps and it worked fine.

I just strap the fermentation heater to the printer lid , it heats the whole chamber well enough that the vat , resin and bed are all nice and warm

I used to have a heating blanket with its fabric cover removed and stuck it behind the Z-piller on my Anycubic M5S and that worked great for a $15 solution. However the Elegoo Saturn 4 series has a flip top and there's no space to install a mat anymore. Will look into the blower fan option.

Great video, I have a fermentation belt with a thermostat works great, but it’s messy and annoying, I prefer my Gk 2 as it’s just much tidier as my garage gets to just above freezing in winter but no doubt $24 is better than an extra $400

I think the only place a blower heater can fit in the Saturn 4 Ultra is where the exhaust goes which isn't ideal and a belt heater won't work on a moving vat. Still can't wait for mine to arrive though!

Excellent video. Just bought the same heating band you show here. I have a Saturn, so the new heater from Elegoo was appealing - until I saw the price!

I have a heat belt on my Halot One+ and it works great! I'd love to put one on my Halot Mage 8K, but there isn't enough clearance at the back of the Resin Tray for a belt. The Chitu heater is currently £70 here. Wham Bam do an ultra thin heating belt which would probably just fit on the Mage, but the price is extortionate and shipping from the US would be ridiculous. I've built Vogmans light bulb based heater for an enclosure, so I might have a go at his blower heater

I used to use a belt for heating till I got the gktwo. The only problem the belt has is that you cant turn it off and the cord causes the printer lid to be open (letting fumes out even if you have a ventilation fan, hot resin smells worse than cold resin). So consider making a little hole or notch for the cord if you plan on using a belt.

Somewhat timely - i grabbed a brewers belt last week, and set it up about 90 minutes ago for the first time. The algorithm is scary sometimes. 😅

I have my printer in my conservatory in the north of England. In winter it gets down to like 10 celsius in there, sometimes lower. I bought myself a brewers belt and a digital thermostat with a probe and wrapped the vat with it. Since I did this I've had almost zero failures that aren't to do with poor support etc, and it cost me maybe £25 to do. Would highly recommend.

I've tried them all. I had weird layer lines every cm I couldn't explain until I figured out it was when my blower heater was turning on and off. These days I use a fermentation belt controlled by a sensor dipped in the corner of the resin when the printer is in standby and heat the whole grow tent I use as an enclosure with a cheap nail heater when printing (for even heating when not mixing). Works perfectly even in my cold northern basement.

The markup on that $60 heater must be crazy. It's pretty much just an off the shelf cheap Chinese ceramic heater, controller, articulated arm and fan.

I built a box to house my printer (the top of which I already had set up for airbrushing) and wired in an electrical outlet. I plugged in a $25 personal heater (with thermostat) and use it to warm the enclosure. It works well enough.

Im glad you retested the belt, most would have been like "aahhh the temp was close enough" and moved on to the next thing.

Note: the Elegoo heater is NOT adjustable. It's hardwired to 25 degrees C and will continually switch on and off to maintain that temp. If you want to go hotter (or colder), you're out of luck. Some engineering resins want much higher temps - up to 28 or 30 degrees. Additionally, while the unit may detect a temp of 25 degrees under the printer's lid, there's no telling if the resin or build plate will actually reach that temp. I suspect, especially in particularly cold climates, that the Elegoo isn't going to be enough to get the resin up to speed and keep it there. An alternative to the brewers belt is the Thermal VatBand. Similar idea to the brewer's belt but it's stuck to the vat with adhesive. A lot more expensive (too expensive if you ask me) but apparently you can run three Vatbands off a single power supply, which would be handy for those running multiple printers (though it will require additional parts like a splitter so price is still crazy) For my money, I like the Anycubic one for ease of use and consistency, but you'll need something smaller, like the Chtu one, for small printers like the Mars' or Phrozen mini.

I have the chitu systems blower... I live in scotland and it can get really cold here. it's currently the middle of Summer and the thermometer in my printer room is showing 15 degrees C. (in the winter it can get WAY below zero here. So even in the summer I still need some kind of heating I've printed in the winter with the chitu blower when the room temp was below zero and everything printed without flaw. (I've had it about 7 months so I've done a LOT of printing using it and have had no issues since) the coldest I ever printed using the blower was minus 5 for the room temperature and the little blower had no issue keeping the inside of the printer at around 22 degrees C. (I normally run it for around an hour before starting the print) I only have a little photon mono 2 so it heats up pretty quick because the build/air volume is pretty small. Obviously the bigger the printer you have I would suspect more pre heat time would be needed. I had tried a brewers belt before getting the blower but just couldn't get it to sit snug enough on the vat for it to work properly. (again probably because the vat is so small) the blower is a pretty snug fit inside the mono 2 but it does fit sure the chitu blower is expensive for what it is but it does the job and is way more precise than a belt regarding the temperature you set. as it will turn on/off the heater as required where as a belt is a one temp thing that you don't have much control over I'm really happy with it and it works well for everyday use with a sample of MANY MANY prints so it's consistant. another thing to mention is that if your resin is heated it should in theory allow you to print faster with shorter exposure times as the liquid is less viscous so can flow below the build plate easier than cold gloopy resin. (after getting the heater I had to recalibrate for the new temps and the difference was around 0.4 seconds per layer so not a huge difference but enough to put a dent in print times for large models with a lot of layers)

More bunnies please

Great vid. I personally prefer the blower style units, at least with my M5s Pro it works perfectly. With my S4U, I just ordered the Mini Heater along with the printer, but my little heater isn't shipping out in Canada until August -- which is fine, and it makes sense that Oz would get their heaters first.

I like the belt

Personnaly, I bought an "external" heater for 15Euros (external because I can't implement it insided the printer..too big). My printer is outside on the balcony but in a self-made wooden enclosure. I set the heater on 30°C 45min before prnting session and everything is fine. The heater just heats the atmosphere and seems to make it work....0 fail this far (10 months). Yet that heating belt is very interesting

I cover the Saturn 3 Ultra in the box it came in, cover it with a blanket, and pre-heat the enclosure with a space heater. It went a long way to prevent failings on Elegoo's ABS-like resin, which appears more sensitive to temperature than the other Elegoo resin's I've tried.

Nice vid! Now go for the same with the Saturn 4 ultra ;-) (Tilting bed!)

My printing environment stays at 15-16⁰C year round. All I've ever done is heat my resin bottle and build plate by sitting them in an old casserole dish full of hot tap water for about 10 minutes (no I don't also cook food in it) and then start printing. The thermo chemical reaction of the printing process in addition to the heat produced by the machines operation keeps my resin between 24-25⁰C at all times, back to back prints are awesome, cuz you cut out the pre heating the resin stage.

hope the Anycubic M7 (non pro) will have a normal vat with no Pumps

10c is a nice warm temp for Canada.

I've been looking at heating solutions as although its summer right now up in the northern hemisphere I know that in a couple of months its going to cause some issues. A brewers belt might just be the thing, thanks.

Curious if there's a heat belt that will work with the tilting bed of the mars and Saturn ultra.

I live in Canberra (Australia, for those non-Aussies), and it gets cold here in winter. I often leave my printer running overnight, and it can get down to 13C overnight in our home (colder in the rooms at the back of the house, where the printer is. I am yet to have any issues with cold temperatures affecting my prints. My resin of choice is a 75/ 25 mix of Monocure3D’s Rapid and Flex100 resins, respectively. Just lucky, I guess… Cheers,

No matter what your solution is, you should slap an "insulating box liner" to your printer so your heater doesn't have to work as hard. Those "reflective bubble wrap" materials are very cheap. Alternatives are reflective foam insulation, or foam insulating boards available in any hardware stores.

All developers should make separate versions. This way you'd also keep the price lower and more affordable, thus bringing more customers, ones that may not need all those extra features. I still have my Mono X, have no problems printing in winter, never had. Even during the night, when outdoors temperature drops, indoors temperature is around 18-20 degrees.

When you add an fermentation belt, you HAVE an inbuilt heater. Anyway, good video.

Temperature has not been a problem in my experience. Printing in my spare room, window open in the Scottish Highlands through winter, with no heating in the room at all. Never had a single issue printing cold like that.

Does the heating belt work on the Saturn 4 Ultra with the moving resin vat?

I have my printers in an old industrial bench fridge. I use a water cooled pc to vent into the fridge to keep it warm.

I put my mars 3 pro vat on a hot water bottle for 10 mins before a print and we all good every time. Then I’m not wasting power on heating the space overnight.

Hello daddy cool. Finally a new video.

Thank you for this video as I'm trying to figure out what printer to get as a migrate up from my starter machine. It may be summer here in Seattle, but I print in the basement (aka the Evil Resin Lair) and since the house doesn't need the furnace, the basement in summer is around 17c. I have had prints fail. I have tried the belt process, but there wasn't enough room between the front of the vat and the lid in my mono 4k, so I purchased a generic chamber heater (a few different labels look to be selling the same one on Amazon for around $35). It's working, but wasn't sure if I needed more. Sounds like I don't. It alsosounds like maybe I can worry less about the heater part of my decision. Please do a review on the M7 Pro. It's on my short list, although the heater attached to the vat scares me, but then again I'm not keen on that uber drippy plate on the S4U. hmmm...... Thanks Again!

So funnily enough when I had a mars pro, the original, when resin printing at home was new this was something i ran into as my major, huge problem. any outdoor temp change vastly effected quality. I ended up buying a DIY chicken egg incubator kit and after some careful dremeling, mounting the cermaic heater PCB to the inner hood of the printer and holes for the buttons so I could adjust the temp without taking the hood off. Worked perfect till the screen died as expected on those old traditional non-mono printers.

Would there be any problems if the resin were too warm? I have a detached garage and it gets pretty hot in there during the summer.

Everyone goes on about cold resin printing, but I live in Florida and about to get my first printer. How hot can we get before failure happen also how about humidity levels. No one has answered this questions yet

Thanks for the video. Are you able to test the belt on the Saturn 4 Ultra? I don't think it will work with how the vat lowers.

A thicker belt with temp control works better.

Oh, dude, I only now noticed that d6 on your logo is "wrong"

I have an enclosure (Wham Bam) plus small heater from Amazon. It's heating the enclosure, not inside of the printer/resin, but it works perfectly for me. I also bought cheap fermentation belt from AliExpress, but I'm scared to use it. While testing, it got very hot. I was scared it might burn my garage. But I wonder, how good would the fermentation belt be with Elegoo Saturn 4 Ultra and moving wat?

How well will that belt work with the tilting vat on the ultras?

I just got the ultra 4 would this work as well since it has a different function and can u do a follow up video with also how to clean the build plate

Will the brewers belt not mess with the Saturn 4 Ultra tilt system?

I never knew all these issue being a Form lab user.

How many watts was the fermentation belt?

Got to say, I miss the concept of reviewing peoples patreons and/or minis. Only so many times can i hear that this printer i haven't heard of doesn't come with features i didn't know existed.

-2c here. brrr. I use reptile heating pads to keep the resin bottles warm, then cover the printer with mylar and a sleeping bag to keep it warm when printing

And yet a few years ago I was heavily critisied (repeatedly) for advising people to ensure their print temp was above 20c as per the resin instructions. Oh how times have changed. :D

Thanks for the video (for us in the frozen north) do you think there's enough clearance for the belt to work with tilting vats? For cold testing you could try to find a free/2nd hand beer fridge/chiller with a glass door, they might be big enough for the large printers to fit?

How do you handle the cord opening a gap and the smells escaping?

Are u familiar with the ThermalVatBand line. Their “band/strap” heaters are brilliant, much cheaper to run too.

Putting a heater in my print enclosure solved so many failures for me.

What are the dimensions of the Anycubic heater? Can only find the shipping package dimensions on their website and amazon...

Enclosure (grow tent) + thermocuple power socket + small ceramic heater. An ultra simple solution that will get you printing anywhere and will not overheat when the printers heat adds up to the volume.

Thoughts on this fitting on the S4U? I've been playing around with designing my own flexible heater for the S4U vat but this would be cheaper.

Can your resin be overheated? Like for example the ambient temp in my garage this time of year is usually around 35c/95f

Seems really weird they're not using silicone heater pads like fdm printers. Self adhesive would stick to the bottom of the vat easily.

ahahahah10C!! omg.. its cold here in brazil today.. 25C :) but aways a awesome video :)

Great video, thank you so much! As a query; I've heard the belts do not work on the tilting vat of the Saturn 4 Ultra- any truth to this? I'd additionally heard that aquarium heaters stuck inside the hood of the printers can also be a very easy, cost efficient solution. Again, is this something you'd heard of and ruled out, or not yet tried? At any rate, kudos for another entertaining and informative video. So glad I subbed!

I got an anycubic. what resin is good for minis ? i need one that is flexible enough so that it does not shatter if it falls on the floor?