Resin or FDM? Which 3D Printer to Buy for What You Actually Print
By Print Farm editorial · Published · Updated
Buy a resin (MSLA) printer if the things you make are small, detailed and decorative: miniatures, busts, jewellery masters, scale detail parts. Buy an FDM printer if they are large, structural, or need to be cheap per part: brackets, enclosures, jigs, toys. The dividing line is geometry, not quality. Resin printers in this catalog resolve pixels of 14 to 35 microns in XY; an FDM printer squeezes plastic through a 0.4 mm nozzle, roughly an order of magnitude coarser. FDM pays that back in build volume, material range, and the fact that a finished FDM part comes off the plate done, with no alcohol, gloves or curing station in the loop.
The real difference is post-processing, not print quality
An FDM part is finished when the print ends. A resin part is not: it comes off the plate coated in liquid resin and has to be washed in isopropyl alcohol or water, then UV-cured, before it is safe to handle or dimensionally settled. That is a second machine and a second workflow, and it is the single most common reason people sell a resin printer after two months.
Budget for it honestly. In the Elegoo catalog we track, a wash-and-cure station runs $119.99 for the compact Mercury Plus V2.0, $199.99 for the Mercury Plus V3.0, and $229.99 for the separate wash and cure units in the Mercury XS Bundle. Add nitrile gloves, eye protection, alcohol and a ventilated spot to work in. A $179 resin printer is not a $179 hobby.
Finest pixel in this lineup; chain mail, rivets, fabric folds
Mars 5 Ultra
18 x 18 microns
Square pixels, no directional bias; excellent for miniatures
Saturn 4 / 4 Ultra
19 x 24 microns
Large plate, still far finer than any nozzle
Jupiter 2
20 x 26 microns
Same 15120 x 6230 panel as the 16K, stretched over 14 inches
Mars 5
35 x 35 microns
Entry pixel; fine for tabletop scale, visible on tiny faces
Any FDM printer here
0.4 mm nozzle
About 400 microns of bead width; a different order of magnitude
Layer height is not the interesting number. In FDM you can drop to 0.1 mm layers and still see the 0.4 mm bead in plan view. Resin fixes the plan view, which is where fine detail lives.
The largest resin printer in this catalog, the Jupiter 2 at $949.00, builds 302.4 x 161.98 x 300 mm. The Neptune 4 Max, at $389.00, builds 420 x 420 x 480 mm, and the OrangeStorm Giga at $2,499.00 builds 800 x 800 x 1000 mm. FDM buys volume for a fraction of the money per litre, and it does it without a 300 mm print's worth of liquid resin sitting in a vat.
Decision rule: measure the largest thing you actually intend to make, in millimetres, before you shop. If it does not fit inside 302 x 162 x 300 mm, resin is not the answer for that part, and splitting-and-gluing a large resin model is a real project, not a footnote.
Resin is a photopolymer: you choose between families like standard, ABS-like, tough, water-washable and plant-based, and the mechanical range is narrower than plastics. Elegoo publishes 59 to 70 MPa flexural strength for its Standard Resin and 19.86 MPa (plus or minus 10%) for the soybean-oil-based Plant-Based Resin, so the family you pick matters more than the brand.
The filament side of the catalog is wider: 115 filament listings covering PLA and PLA Plus, PLA-CF, PETG and PETG-CF/GF, ABS, ASA, TPU 95A, PC, PC-FR, PET-CF and PAHT-CF. If a part needs to live outdoors, take heat, flex without snapping, or be screwed into, that list is where the answer is.
Across the resin listings we track, a 1 kg bottle works out to a median of $21.99 per kg, while 10 and 12 kg cases drop to a median of $15.83 per kg. Filament spools start at $13.49. On a per-gram basis the two are closer than people expect.
The gap is in consumables. A resin printer eats release film and, eventually, an LCD: replacement screens in this catalog run from $84.99 (Mars 4, Mars 5 Ultra) to $229.99 (Jupiter 2), and release film multipacks run $19.99 to $74.99. An FDM printer's equivalent wear part is a brass nozzle kit at $9.99.
Miniatures, busts, model kits, jewellery: resin. Start at the Mars class and buy the wash-and-cure station at the same time.
Functional parts, enclosures, brackets, anything over 200 mm: FDM. The Centauri and Neptune families cover this from $219.00.
Kids in the house, no ventilated workspace, no lockable storage: FDM. Uncured resin is a skin sensitiser and belongs in a controlled space.
You want both eventually: buy FDM first. It teaches slicing, orientation and supports with a far more forgiving failure mode.
You only ever print one very detailed thing a month: buy resin, but buy 1 kg bottles. Elegoo lists a one-year shelf life on Standard Resin, so a 12 kg case is a false economy at low volume.
Is resin detail actually visible, or is it a spec-sheet thing?
It is visible. The finest resin pixel here is 14 x 19 microns against a 0.4 mm FDM nozzle, so features like chain mail links, fabric weave and facial detail resolve on resin and smear on FDM. For a 200 mm bracket you will never notice the difference.
Can I put a resin printer in a bedroom or a shared office?
Not comfortably. Elegoo's photopolymer resin safety data sheet carries H317 (may cause an allergic skin reaction) and H335 (may cause respiratory irritation, uncured material only), and recommends use in an enclosed process area with adequate ventilation. A garage, shed or a room with real airflow is the right home for it.
Which is cheaper to run?
FDM, once consumables are counted. Resin costs a median $21.99 per kg in 1 kg bottles against $13.49 for an entry filament spool, and resin printers additionally consume release film and eventually the LCD panel, which is $84.99 to $229.99 depending on model.
Do resin printers need supports on everything?
Almost always, yes, and the supports are denser than FDM supports because each layer is peeled off a release film. That peel force is why orientation, hollowing and drain holes matter so much on resin and barely at all on FDM.
Editorial conclusions are drawn from the Elegoo catalog data and the manufacturer documentation listed above; we do not claim to have used every product shown. Updated 2026-08-25. Corrections: contact us.
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