Elegoo Mercury Plus V3.0 Wash and Cure station review — Not just bigger, but so much better

Most folks seem to get into 3D printing for smaller things – figures for tabletop, functional clips and charms, and decorations. We’ve covered printers of all shapes and sizes, having printed everything from dragon horns to light sabers and armor. My favorite things to print, however, are big figures and statues. I’ve got the large-scale printers to handle the bigger volume goodies, but washing and curing larger prints has always been a challenge. Well Elegoo has been listening and just recently they’ve kicked off the pre-launch for their newest station, the Elegoo Mercury Plus V3.0. Let’s get something cool printed and put this newest combination wash/cure station through its paces.

As I mentioned, this unit is larger, but that’s far from the only change. Previous units like the Elegoo XS Bundle Wash and Cure stations we’ve reviewed had split up the two units, using one station to wash, and a separate one to cure. Depending on how many projects you have in motion, or how many pieces those projects might be in, you might appreciate having the utility of two stations that can be running simultaneously. As I pointed out in that review, however, we do need a bigger solution. Having used this separated unit for nearly a year, I also found that I was using the external light pen quite a bit. I also appreciated the taller verticality, but found the placement of the light arms a bit tight for oddly-shaped prints like the recently-printed face mask portion of my Warhammer 40K helmet. Nothing insurmountable, by any stretch, but we are going big, aren’t we?

The new Mercury Plus V3.0 adopts many of the improvements we’d requested in our previous review, but also moved back to a single unit. This means you’ve got one individual base that you use for both cleaning and curing, not unlike their Mercury Plus V2.0. Just like that station, you’ll remove the spinning turntable, allowing you to place the new larger cleaning bucket. While the V2.0 had a dinky 3500 mL maximum capacity, the XS pushed that to 7000. The V3.0 bumps that once again, maxing out at 7500 mL for just a little more space for your big prints. There’s a lot more than just the 114% additional volume at play here.

If you’ve used a wash bucket, then you know that inevitably you’ll find yourself reaching inside to pull on a metal basket to extract your cleaned prints. The Mercury Plus V3.0 has a completely new plastic basket that is not only lightweight, but also reconfigurable into two modes – something Elegoo is calling “Basket Cleaning Mode” and “Hanging Cleaning Mode”.

Basket Cleaning Mode is what we’re all used to using. After removing the printed item from the plate, you have a total wash volume of 230mm x 135mm x 260mm – a huge increase over the V2.0’s max size of 131mm x 90mm x 220mm. Hanging Cleaning Mode instead allows you to keep your print on the plate, cleaning it before you remove it. It accomplishes this with two adjustable support brackets that can adapt up to 10 inches, allowing you to set the build plate and prints directly into the basket, letting it rest on a ridge at the top. Obviously you’ll lose some of the total volume (214mm x 135mm x 180mm) but it does mean you can go from printing to cleaning with no additional steps. It’s worth noting that your larger print might bump the bottom, so be mindful of having at least a little bit of clearance. I can only think of one reason to wash with the plate attached – smaller and fragile items. The hitch, of course, is that it means you have to fill the bucket almost to the top to wash things this way. A better solution is a small tray you enclose smaller or fragile items to fully submerge them off the plate without letting them whip around during the process, but it’s your station – use it how you wish.

One of the things you’ll appreciate if you do use the Hanging Cleaning Mode method is that the V3.0 supports plates up to 10”, which includes just about anything smaller than the behemoth Jupiter SE. If you have an older unit, there’s a very good chance that this new station will adapt to it easily enough. That’s not the only trick this basket has to offer, though – let’s take a closer look.

Washing stations use a magnetic rotation system to create turbidity inside the basin. This churn of the isopropyl alcohol is what sheds a bit of the residual resin that has stayed behind after your print. Prior models used a dual-function stepper motor that would spin up, effectively creating a small tornado inside the liquid that pushes the resin off the print and towards the edges. The Mercury Plus V3.0 upgrades this motor to a new polyoxymethylene (POM) motor. This motor type provides a smoother and more powerful rotational force without the need for additional grease or lubrication. This should help with longevity for the unit, holding up to repeatedly spinning up and down consistently. Smoother rotation means more consistently cleaned prints, and that means less little white spots and other residual resin issues.

Just like when I picked up my V2.0 model, and the XS model, my desire is always to have a second basket as I like to clean my prints in two stages. I like a somewhat dirty first pass, followed by a very clean second one. Then, I air dry the object overnight and cure it the next day for a completely clean and perfect cure every time. It’s probably overkill, but I don’t have problems with slimy, sticky, or stinky prints, and isn’t that the goal? Patience goes a long way.

Now that we’ve got the print washed, it’s time to cure it. The V3.0 is a pretty big improvement over its predecessor, not only expanding the overall size by a whopping 460%, but also altering the method of curing just slightly. The XS model had a pair of arms, each with 14 UV LEDs on each side to evenly spread the light across the model as it rotated. These 28 LEDs, plus the 4 UV LEDs that shined upwards from the bottom, would cure through the clear plastic plate, offering an even bathe of light at 405nm. The V3.0 uses what I believe to be an improved approach.

The Elegoo Mercury Plus V2.0 had a small rectangle with four upward-facing LEDs under a clear plastic cover. The Mercury Plus V3.0 improves on this by instead using a pair of rectangular mirrors extending from the vertical light towers all the way to the center. Instead of using LEDs that simply point up into the print, this approach bathes the print in the 405nm UV light needed to resin into magic. Further improving the light coverage, the team added a new Fresnel lens to each of these arms to further spread the light around the chamber. It’s the same technology used in some VR headsets and the same concentric ring system you’ll find employed in lighthouses to maximize the light output without further raising the power level.

While we’re on the topic of light, unsurprisingly the team at Elegoo wants to keep your eyes safe. As such, the Mercury Plus V3.0 has an orange octagonal anti-UV cover. There’s a microswitch in the base to turn the light off if the lid is lifted, ensuring you don’t get 405nm of light right in the eyes. Safety first.

There is one question that remains on the Mercury Plus V3.0. Right next to the light switch is a small 24v1.5A connector for….something. We don’t have a purpose for this quite yet, but unlike the hard-wired light curing pen on the V2.0 model, this could be where Elegoo could add all sorts of awesome tools. Sonic cutters, sanders, light curing pens, whatever they’d like to add to the mix. Frankly, I’m hoping for all three!

As always, it’s time to hit the price and warranty section. As always, the unit comes with a 1 year warranty, but the price was a surprise. Pre-launch you’re looking at $129, and undoubtedly this’ll be a big hit on Black Friday. At some point post-launch that price will likely pop to the MSRP of $169, so make sure you move quick!

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