As we all know by now I’m still VERY new to the world of printing with resins, which in my opinion makes me the perfect person to do some reviews on things like this. I know just enough to be dangerous, I know how to properly handle and use the resins, I know how to adjust my settings for the various resins ( more on this in a minute ). So yeah, let’s get into this shall we ???
First, here are the links to the resins I purchased off of Amazon:
These resins are being used on my Elegoo Mars printers and with the Elegoo Mercury curing station/ex-bake oven thingy
Right off the bat I was thrown off by the price point of the Phrozen resins. At about $36.00 US per liter it was a bit pricey for me since I already anticipated screwing things up A LOT… and I did. I was content with the $12 – $15 per liter resins that came from some guys garage in some small Asian country that I may never be able to purchase again but hey, the price is right at the moment. So price point, definitely something to consider, but with that I will honestly say, you get what you pay for in this case.
I purchased a liter of the gray and black water washable resins, simply because I thought they might be easier to cleanup than using the IPA and yeah, it is in my opinion. Using hot water the parts come clean with hardly any problems… the key is HOT water. I figured this was a no brainer but apparently someone else complained that they aren’t water washable at all and the internet descended upon them to say “use hot water”.
Okay so I have a liter of gray and liter of black. Me being me I wanted to use the black first because black is cool right? Of course it is, and if you can 3D print things in black then it becomes 100 times cooler right? Hell yeah it does !!! And let’s pause for a second and rewind to the first paragraph where I mentioned the bit about knowing how to adjust my settings for the various resins…. this is how I learned that. Who knew that the black resin wouldn’t let the UV light penetrate it as much thus curing as quickly as other resins ( only everyone who went to a school with more than one door and an indoor bathroom ). My first prints failed horribly, turned into gooey blobs on the bottom of the vat, never really sticking to the build plate at all and yeah… so the black resin got set aside and I moved onto the gray. Keep in mind, at this point I had not changed any of my settings in Chitubox yet. Prints started coming out and wow, they were nice, couple of them had issues so I got on the interwebs and did some research and whoa, settings need to be changed for various types of resins…
GAME CHANGER !!! So I cleaned out the vats, replaced the FEP in one of them from where I had to basically rip it apart to get the gelatinous black sludge off the bottom. Now let’s try this again with the black resin. I looked around and found some common numbers recommended across the web for various black resins and then compared them to the ones I found for Phrozen’s black resin and came up with this setup:
Low and behold my prints came out looking great. Bed adhesion seemed to be a huge part of the problem and by setting the bottom exposure time to 220s that gave the resin plenty of time to “bake” onto the build plate. I bumped up the exposure time to over double what was originally set for the standard resin which also helped with sagging parts and islands not forming right. Sadly now that I’ve figured all this out I’ve run out of black resin but will definitely be getting more of it.
The gray resin was a lot easier to use, hardly changed anything but I wanted to ensure I had good bed adhesion because some of the prints I was doing were tall and that meant a lot of weight on the support structure, this was a source of failure for a couple of prints. Using what I learned on how to improve bed adhesion I adjusted my settings accordingly and now don’t have that problem. Here’s my settings for the gray resin.
As you can see, the bottom exposure time is still higher than normal but for what I am printing and doing, it works for me and I haven’t had any problems with these settings in over a week now. So let’s move onto the characteristics of these resins.
Both of these resins are smooth pouring, the black is a bit thicker than the gray and has a more oily texture to it. When they first come out of the printer the black resin is very pliable and the supports can easily be popped right off in most cases. The gray resin seems to be a bit more brittle when it comes out of the printer and if you’re not careful it’s possible to damage the pieces even before curing them. I tried different settings for the supports to try and overcome this issue with the gray resin but it didn’t seem to make much difference, my solution was to just use my flat snips and take my time and cut the supports off. End result is the same just a bit more effort. I will say it is kind of satisfying to just grab the bottom of the black resin prints and with a gentle pull, all of the support material comes away lol.
Onto curing… curing… hmmm…. Ok, I own the Elegoo Mercury, bought it with my first Mars printer, it’s a great little ez-bake oven type thing for when the weather is bad in the Florida Panhandle which is all the time lately. The black resin has to go through several 9 1/2 minute intervals ( the max on the Mercury ) to cure a piece whereas the gray can be cured in one or two intervals depending on the size and whether or not it casts shadows on itself. In the sunlight though, both of these harden right up in under 15 minutes and I am able to prime and paint them. As far as density and brittleness… the black remains the harder of the two and can take a good chuck at the ground with little to no damage; the gray on the other-hand… no so much and it can be easy to chip and break.
So now it’s time for me to list my take on the pro’s and con’s of these resins:
| The Pros | The Cons |
| – Water Washable – Use HOT water – Smooth Flowing and Easy to Use – Little to no shrinkage that I noticed – Packaged well in bubble wrap and dark bottles – The Black Resin supports come off easily – The Gray Resin cures quickly with no discoloration | – Price Point – Almost Twice the cost of some resins – No instructions like suggested printer settings – The Black Resin has an oily residue ( can be washed off though ) – The Gray Resin is brittle – The Black Resin requires much longer exposure times when printing – Limited to 1 liter bottle size, I need more !!! |
So there you have it, my take on the two resins I’ve tried from Phrozen and to be honest, I will continue to use these for myself, my friends, and my customers. Now that I know how to adjust my settings and properly handle things I have not had any failed prints caused by resin or printer issues.
As a parting note, if you found this review at all useful, please consider making a donation to the site. Every little bit helps and goes right back into projects, products, reviews, etc.. I was not paid to do this review, I purchased these resins with my own money off of Amazon ( gotta love that 2 day shipping ), and I will continue to do so because I feel it’s the best way to give honest and unbiased reviews of products. As such these are my opinions and may differ from someone else or the entire world’s opinion.