Elegoo Saturn – scaleModelGuy

What Screen Death Looks Like On My Elegoo Saturn

_{Results from tank clean command on my Elegoo Saturn’s dying LCD screen.}

Oct. 9, 2025

A sad day, confirming my long held belief that there was something off with my Elegoo Saturn. I knew it had a dead spot at 12:00 and that failures were frequent below it too. I mention this as early as my Revell Arizona 1917 conversion project with the box of failure picture. I’d come to avoid the vertical center of the Saturn’s build area for all of my recent German Recognition ship prints. With their completion I finally drained the vat and took a look at what was going on.

What an odd death pattern. I get and expected the 12:00 patch of darkness but the brightness around it is odd, as is the dim area just under the brightness. I’m guessing the left and right flanks are normal? I’d still had good luck printing in those areas. Or is the brightest area around the 12:00 dead zone the only part still functioning at 100%? The underlying grid pattern is also unexpected and seems like it could cause issues. I wish I’d done this test when I first got the printer to establish a base line. Also wish I knew what could cause these types of failure. Think I’ll post this on Redit and see if anyone can enlighten me.

While I’ve had the Saturn for about 3 years it had only run for approximately 200 hours before the first Arizona print failures, not much by any standard. I did do all my printing in an unheated/un-cooled shed so it did see temps in the range of 40-100 degrees Fahrenheit, but the same is true for my Creality LD-002r resin printer and it’s still fine with much more print time on it.

I’ve looked into replacement screens and they are no longer available from Elegoo. The only option I’ve seen is from Chitu box, they don’t look identical to the Elegoo part but are likely fine, if I wanted to spend $119 USD on Amazon. Currently the Saturn 2 & 3 are still selling new for $279 with slightly larger build areas and much higher resolutions, though I do hate rewarding such poor durability and support with repeat business.

I suppose I can keep using it “as is” for a while longer, maybe prices will drop or a new killer resin printer will be released. With winter coming there’s no rush for me to buy new right now.

Kormoran, German WW2 Auxiliary Cruiser, Recognition Style Model 3D printed in 1/500 Scale – Completed

July 30, 2025

OK, “Completed” may not be the right word, this model is definitely completed but while building it, I discovered my Kormoran design and any future assemblies of it, will benefit greatly from a few changes, more on that in just a bit. Here’s a Wikipedia link: German Auxiliary Cruiser Kormoran, if you’re not familiar with her impressive history it’s definitely worth a read.

The images above are basically of a beta build. The top 6 are of the completed model, the lower three are of the assembled, unpainted ship and two shots of the Ender 3 Pro FDM hull parts. There are no decent pictures of the resin print outs. If you’ve read my Nuremburg post, you may recall I’d discovered what seemed to be a dead spot on my Elegoo Saturn. I needed to rearrange, re-support and re-slice, Nuremburg’s parts in ChituBox to avoid it, in order to get perfect prints. Well… I’d already had Kormoran’s resin parts arranged, supported, sliced and ready to go… So I rolled the dice… and lost, a couple times. Of course it was the superstructure that was over the dead spot and it failed. I ended up just printing two superstructure only parts on either side of the build plate, avoiding the Saturn’s now confirmed center dead spot, both printed perfectly.

Between failed prints and the final superstructure print, I had all the parts needed (and then some) to complete this model.

But as mention above change is need, The torpedo bays in the FDM parts were a bear to get the supports out of, I ended up considerably damaging the hull around the openings doing so – that’s changed to now have separate roof pieces. The amidship gun covers needed reworking as did the bow deck cover over the forward guns. The mast and wench parts were a bear to assemble, they’ve been changed to what I hope is an easier to work with design, and many, many, other small tweaks.

All that said and flaws aside, I do like the looks of her and think this beta build shows potential.

Nuremberg, German WW2 Light Cruiser, Recognition Style Model 3D printed in 1/500 Scale – Completed

July 28, 2025

Almost everything about my Nuremberg (Nürnberg) model was easy and fast, which was extremely fortunate as it was the first model I’d printed all summer! Hard to believe the last project I’d finished was the Arizona 1917 conversion just over a year ago… time flies. Nuremberg fits into my growing collection of German WW2 recognition style ships perfectly. I’ve quite the grouping now and am having fun kicking around ideas for a display box. No doubt I’ll end up going with the standard grey exterior, light blue interior, wooden box with removable shelves to mimic the original recognition sets but it’s fun to dream.

Below are pictures of the printed parts and the initial assembly.

You may notice 3 float planes were printed. This was due to the extremely fine/weak struts that attach the pontoons to the plane’s fuselage. I figured I might need more than one chance at removing the plane from its supports in one piece. The Ender 3 Pro banged out the FDM hull parts perfectly in one go. The Elegoo Saturn however had an odd print failure on the large superstructure piece. The failure happened in a similar way to the many fails I’d had with the replacement deck part for the Revell Arizona 1917 conversion project. Even more incriminating, Nuremberg’s superstructure piece was sitting at the same spot on the build plate where the Arizona’s failures happened. As nothing appeared to be stuck to the vat film, on a hunch, I just shuffled the parts around in Chitubox, avoiding about a 1″x1″ area in the middle of the plate, re-sliced and reprinted, Success! Next time I drain the vat I’ll check the LCD screen and vat film for issues but after not using my printers for over a year I feel I got off easy. I didn’t even need to re-level anything!

Elegoo Saturn Print Examples

German Graf Zepplin aircraft carrier 1/500 scale

German Admiral Scheer Pocket Battleship 1/500 scale

This post is long over due and the printer that created these print examples is now well past it’s sell by date. That said, I still wanted to post a collection of print examples from my Original Elegoo Saturn 3D printer as I’ve found it to be a tremendously capable and reliable printer.

I’m also hoping that seeing what a now obsolete resin 3D printer can do in the hands of an amateur, may inspire a few creative types to take the plunge! Again, that said: For the Love of God! read up on my earlier Saturn and LD-002r posts to more fully see what you might be getting into!

Once again, that said: Worth it!

New Project Time?

Imperial German Navy, WWI Torpedo Boat: V69

I still have the Revell USS Arizona WWI conversion project to finish, it’s been more challenging than expected but once she’s done, I’ve a choice to make.

Over the last few years, mostly while printing, building and recovering from Charles Martel, I’ve kept busy in Blender revisiting some of my earlier, favorite designs, rebuilding them from the ground up to be reprinted on my Elegoo Saturn. This allowed/required me to increase their detail levels to take advantage of the Saturn’s capabilities and also because I’ll be printing some of them in a larger scale. During this time I also completed a couple totally new designs, IJN Yamato and a German Schnellboot, and last and yes least, there’s my tiny Japanese WWII plane collection in 1/450 scale, intended to augment some of my “finished” Japanese ships. They’re fairly simple and were fun Blender designs to create, only taking a day or so each.
I’m almost ready to dive in, but which to start?
Decisions, decisions!

Graf Zeppelin 1/500 scale German recognition model complete

My Graf Zeppelin German aircraft carrier, is complete. She fits in well with the rest of the fleet. A faux WW2 recognition model, she probably has a bit more detail than a real one would’ve but I couldn’t resist, the under deck support details were just too cool to omit. She’s a whopper too, building out to about 21 inches. She was also the most difficult of my recognition replicas to design, her casemated guns were tricky and her high degree of bow flare that blends into the near vertical hanger deck sides took me a while to get right (or at least acceptable) . I actually printed a first draft on the Ender 3 that didn’t look right in hand – huge waste of filament!

I’m thinking I’ll only recreate one each of the light cruisers and destroyers that came in the original 1/500 scale German recognition set. Then I’ll call this project complete. But they’ll have to wait till spring for completion, winter has solidly set in and my resin printing is done in a shed. The Blender work will keep me busy for a bit and I’ve been off and on with a schnellboot design for almost a year…

Update Aug. 14 2025

Graf Zeppelin is now even more complete!

Update Aug. 15, 2025

I just finished recreating the entire USN WWII German Naval Recognition Set (and then some) in 1/500 scale, check out the results.

German Admiral Scheer 1/500 scale ww2 recognition replica complete

Right on the heels of completing Scharnhorst, the design, printing, and assembly of my Admiral Scheer Pocket Battleship/Panzerschiff/Heavy Cruiser, was a piece of cake. Everything just came together and worked the first time.

My next design will be more challenging and diverges from the authentic 1/500 scale WW2 German recognition sets with a subject that I have always wanted to see included in them – the Graf Zeppelin Aircraft Carrier.

Update Aug. 15, 2025

I just finished recreating the entire USN WWII German Naval Recognition Set (and then some) in 1/500 scale, check out the results.

German battleship Scharnhorst 1/500 scale ww2 recognition replica complete

Scharnhorst is complete, I’ve been able to take advantage of a relatively warm weather window and print the resin parts for Scharnhorst, Scheer and Graf Zeppelin (GZ is actually still printing, again…). While recreating these recognition replicas has been a blast, I’m finding that without an example in hand, it’s difficult to stick to the original designs as seen from pictures on the web. I inevitably need actual pictures of the real ships to fill in the blanks and when I start designing from them, it’s painful to stop, and retain the often inaccurate design elements of the actual recognition models.

When I get all the ships completed I’ll likely make a project page to contain them all but for now this post is it for Scharnhorst.

Update Aug. 15, 2025

I just finished recreating the entire USN WWII German Naval Recognition Set in 1.500 scale check out the results.

Scharnhorst, Joins My WW2 German Fleet of Recognition Replicas in 1/500 Scale

3D Printed WW2 German recognition Fleet Replicas 1/500 Scale

Scharnhorst is almost ready to join my 3D printed WW2 German recognition replica fleet. The blender model still needs some finish work. I need to hollow out the resin parts and clip objects that are partially embedded in other parts but will be printed separately. With any luck I’ll have some warmish days to print the resin parts before the cold sets in for the season.

I don’t have an original Comet model of Scharnhorst, I searched online and used the few halfway decent pictures I could find and diagrams of the actual ship. When printed she will fill a whole in my collection nicely.

I’ll likely have plenty of time this winter to design the rest of the set. I’ll be starting the Blender design of Admiral Scheer next. I don’t have an original model of her either…

3D printed Tirpitz 1/500 scale model

October 11, 2023

After completing the Prinz Eugen replica Comet recognition model, it was only natural to follow up with Tirpitz.
Again I used the Ender 3 Pro for the “Wooden” hull parts and my Elegoo Saturn for the parts that would have been cast lead on the Comet models.

As with Prinz Eugen, the pictures with two ships show my printed model next to an original. And again like Eugen, this Tirpitz is not a perfect replica – minor improvements were made as well as a few mistakes…
My next version should be close to perfect 🙂

This was a small, simple build, so no project page, just this post.

Update Aug. 15, 2025

I just finished recreating the entire USN WWII German Naval Recognition Set (and then some) in 1/500 scale, check out the results.