The Creality Halot One Plus is a 4K resin 3D printer with a 5” colour touch screen, built in WiFi for remote print monitoring and a decent sized print volume.
Resin printers excel at printing incredibly detailed 3D models. Even tiny prints smaller than your thumb nail look very impressive – something almost impossible with filament based 3D printers.
If you’re new to this technology I’d highly recommend you take a look at my previous article that introduces resin 3D printing. But in essence these printers use UV light to harden liquid resin into your 3D model, layer by layer and with almost invisible layer lines.
I’ll run through the printers’ features and through a selection of test prints I’ll help you decide if this might be the right printer for you. So let’s take a closer look.
Overview
Inside the box you get the printer itself with its mains cable and resin vat, a USB stick, a metal spatula for removing prints off the build plate and a plastic one for cleaning the resin vat, some Allen keys, 2 resin filters, a spare FEP sheet and a very basic instruction manual. Check the USB stick for a basic operation video and the complete user manual.
Unlike your typical filament printer, the printer is already pretty much ready to go. After powering on the printer you’ll need to enter your WiFi password for over the air firmware upgrades and to use the printer with Creality’s Cloud software.
You don’t have to connect to WiFi – if you wait a few seconds you can just tap on the “Homepage” icon. For your first print all you need to do is level the print bed, attach the resin tank, and fill the tank with your choice of resin. But I’d recommend updating the firmware first, which is easiest to do over WiFi. Just tap on Settings | Update | Wireless Network Upgrade.
Use the supplied calibration card to level the bed. Place the card on the printer’s screen, loosen the four bolts securing the print bed and then tap Settings | Print Settings | Z-axis movement and Levelling. Secure the four bolts with even pressure on the build plate. Then tap Back to Zero. It’s very quick and you’ll only really need to do it again if you manage to knock it out of alignment, or if you get any printing issues.
The resin tank butts against the printers’ positioning bolts and is then secured in place with the two knobs.
Inside the printer the Z-axis runs on dual linear rails and there’s a welcome small air filtration system to the back right to mitigate at least some of the nasty printing fumes.
The machine runs directly off mains with a standard IEC kettle lead plugged into the back of the printer – no mains adapter is required. The power switch is just beside it.
The front of the machine has the 5” LCD colour touch screen, a USB-A port for connecting a USB stick, and a USB-B port for connecting the printer directly to a computer.
I won’t cover the user interface in detail since it’s mostly self explanatory. If you want to use the printer with the Creality Cloud app to monitor your prints etc, tap on Settings | Details | Bind Creality Cloud. I’ll briefly cover Creality Cloud later in the review but for the more advanced “Premium” features Creality wants you to pay £80 a year which seems extremely steep to me. I may take a more detailed look in a future video to see how the premium subscription works, not only with this printer but other Creality Printers I own and their Klipper based SonicPad I reviewed a while back.
You can also change the look of the user interface under Settings | Other Settings | Custom Skin.
Overall the Halot One Plus feels like a solid machine. It weighs 6.8 kg (15 lnbs) and measures 236 x 243 x 418 mm (9.3 x 9.6 x 16.5 in).
It is a 4K 4320 x 2560 resolution printer with a 172 x 102 x 160 mm build volume. It has a 200mm or 7.9” mono LCD screen. Dividing the horizontal dimensions by the resolution of the screen gives the horizontal accuracy of 0.04mm: 172 mm divided by 4320. Very similar horizontal accuracy to the Elegoo Mars 2 Pro I looked at a while back. That printer was only 2K resolution but with a smaller build volume had a comparable horizontal resolution of 0.05mm.
The main advantage of a printer like the Halot One Plus on paper is the larger build volume and built-in WiFi.
Performance
I’m using Creality’s Water Washable Resin Plus in “skin” colour to test this printer. It’s the first time I’ve used a water washable resin. Typically you need IPA to clean your resin prints, but this resin dissolves in water alone which makes cleaning prints and tidying up much easier. You will still need a mask and gloves – just like every resin I’ve used it’s potent stuff and even though it supposedly has “low odour” you can definitely still smell it. I’m sensitive to the smell of resin, and IPA for that matter, and I wear a quality respirator whenever the lid is off the printer and when handling prints before they’re fully cured.
After a thorough shake I filled the resin tank using its convenient volume markings and sent a calibration print that I’d loaded on the USB stick. I’m using the excellent Cones of Calibration model from TableFlip Foundry. I started with an exposure of 3 seconds, halfway between Creality’s recommended 2.5 to 3.5 seconds.
I sliced the model in Lychee Slicer, but you can also use Creality’s Halot Box that comes with the printer, or Chitubox. Fortunately you’re not tied to any particular software.
After tapping on Print and selecting the model off the USB stick, it’s downloaded to the printer itself. You can remove the USB stick and then tap on the print which is now stored in the printer’s memory. Only one print can be stored in the printer’s memory at a time.
You’re prompted to use either File Settings, or Printer Settings that you can configure in Print Settings | Printing Parameters. Typically you’ll use File Settings. You can then tap on Start. During the print you can pause the print which will raise the build plate out of the vat for inspection, and you can tap on Settings to dynamically adjust print parameters. The interface is a little cumbersome but you do get used to it.
The display shows a thumbnail of the model, time remaining and a count of the current layer being printed. But it doesn’t show exactly what is actually printing for each layer which I’d much prefer.
The print took around 40 minutes and came off the build plate fairly easily with the supplied metal spatula.
I got lucky with an almost perfect first print. I’ll provide a link down below to the Cones of Calibration model and how to read it. They’ve just released a version 2 of this calibration model that prints a little quicker, but I’ve not tried it yet.
This isn’t the quietest resin printer – the fans are quite noisy. You can hear how it sounds in the accompanying video. The carbon filter does a decent job of suppressing fumes from the resin, but you can still smell it and I’ve relegated all resin printing to my shed.
Next up I printed another calibration print – the AmeriLabs Town model. This is a great model to demonstrate what resin printers are capable of.
The amount of detail is incredible and this is another excellent result. You have to look with a magnifying glass to spot any minor imperfections.
After these test prints I tried printing some real models. I printed this Eiffel tower without any supports and the resulting print was near perfect. I washed it using Creality’s UW-01 Washing & Curing station. I used IPA since I’m using it for other non-water washable resins, but water does seem to clean up this resin just fine.
If I was only using this resin, I’d switch to water or perhaps a 1:10 IPA to water mix. The only real disadvantage of water is it doesn’t evaporate off as quickly as IPA.
Bizarrely the wash station doesn’t come with an M6 knob to attach the build plate. And the knob from the Halot One Plus is too big. I had to initially use an M6 bolt, and later a smaller M6 bolt installed in a knob I 3D printed. I did manage to carelessly break the spire off the Eiffel Tower model in the wash process.
Installing the reflective turntable in the UW-01 I then cured the print using its dual wavelength UV LEDs. The UW-01 does need an AC adapter, unlike the printer, and you do need to be careful ensuring you’re in the right mode. You don’t want curing mode with the model suspended in the cleaning solution.
Next I needed a build plate drainer to suspend the build plate at an angle on the printer’s Z-axis to let the majority of the excess resin drip back into the tank. I sliced this model from Thingiverse in Lychee Slicer with medium auto-supports.
There are a few scars from removing the supports but it came out pretty well and works perfectly. There are links to all the models I’ve printed down below.
I’d had no failed prints so far but I was a little too confident with this model of the Leaning Tower of Pisa my son was after. The supports for the base weren’t sturdy enough and I ended up with only the supports still attached to the build plate.
Cleaning out the resin vat is my least favourite part of resin printing. I used the Settings | Cleaning function to expose the whole bottom of the resin tank. The default time is 25 seconds but I did it a second time – it wastes resin but makes the sheet of hardened resin easier to remove with the plastic spatula. You can try placing an old support structure in the vat before you expose the resin. You can then use this as a handle to lift up the resin.
This has worked for me in the past – but didn’t work very well with this water based resin and detached itself when I started lifting it.
I did successfully print this model with heavier supports and it came out ok. But this is a model I’d need to play around with orientation and use manual supports for a cleaner result.
One of my other children was after a model of Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia which I printed without any supports.
It came out pretty well and with an incredible amount of detail considering it’s smaller than my thumb.
I wanted to test out printing directly from Creality Cloud. I selected the Minions model directly from the printer. It’s downloaded from the Internet and is pre-sliced with supports. Whether you select File Parameters or Printer Parameters you’ll need to adjust Settings for whatever resin you’re using before you start the print. As a side note, it is a great feature of this printer – easily being able to adjust printing settings for an already sliced model.
Still, I wouldn’t even consider printing an unknown already sliced model like this, if I wasn’t reviewing the printer and testing all its capabilities. I’d much prefer to have full control over what I’m sending to a resin printer. And as I mentioned earlier the LCD display doesn’t even display each layer’s exposure as it prints, which would at least offer some reassurance.
The model did come out pretty well and the supports were easy to remove without too much scarring.
But this model isn’t hollowed which is very wasteful and weighed in at almost 140g for a 7cm tall model. At the typical price of 1kg of resin that’s a cost of around £4!
Whilst we are on Creality Cloud you can also use the smartphone app to send models from Creality’s library straight to the printer. Again I prefer to slice my own models but the app is handy to see how your print is progressing. You can also connect a webcam which I tried. It worked pretty well with a Logitech C920, but it’s not particularly useful for resin printing since you need the cover on in most cases so you won’t be able to see what’s going on.
Finally I tried this tricky print-in-place credit card wallet. I wasn’t expecting a successful print but it came out ok. It was tricky removing the supports inside the wallet and if I printed it again I’d try printing it vertically. But it looks ok apart from a few support scars and most importantly the moving lever that ejects your cards does work. I tried this same print with a filament printer – the Flsun SuperRacer. Printing at 0.12mm it took just under 5 hours – similar to the resin print, but came out a lot better. The money clip looks like it’ll break off very easily on the resin print and has already started warping, but in PLA off the filament printer the whole thing feels tougher. Although you don’t get the near invisible layer lines of resin printing.
Conclusions
At this price point there are plenty of 4K resin printers available, but the Creality Halot One Plus is definitely worth considering. It produces detailed quality prints and it’s easy to set up and use. I printed pretty much non-stop for almost a week and only had one failed print and that was entirely my fault.
There are a number of variables with resin printing, most notably the resin you’re using and the ambient temperatures whilst printing. So depending on your setup you may need a little more experimentation.
The printer’s user interface is a little cumbersome and it’s quite a noisy printer. But you get used to the interface and I personally won’t be in the same room as a resin printer whilst it’s printing because of the smell – so noise isn’t an issue for me. I did find its WiFi capabilities a little under utilised – it should be much easier to send prints wirelessly to the printer. But being able to monitor prints remotely is useful.
I wasn’t expecting much from Creality’s water-washable resin I used in my tests but I was pleasantly surprised. Resin printing is messy but this resin is so much easier to clean up just with water. I print mostly functional models and I’d still choose my filament 3D printers for the majority of those prints. I’ve played around with tougher resins, but in my experience they don’t come close to far cheaper options available on an FDM printer. But when I do need a super detailed print, and strength isn’t my number one concern, I can definitely see the advantage of resin printing. And I will be experimenting further with these water based resins to make the whole process just that little bit easier.
There are cheaper 4K resin printers around, like the Elegoo Mars 3 Pro and the even cheaper Anycubic Photon Mono 4K. But neither of these printers have WiFi if that’s important to you. If you’re going to print only small models, you could perhaps save more money with a 2K printer. With resin printers, bigger is not always better – you really need to think how you might use a resin printer.
Don’t forget to take a look at my YouTube video at the top of the page, and subscribe to my YouTube channel where I’m releasing videos every week on the latest technology and how to get the most out of it. If you tap the bell icon when you subscribe you’ll get a notification as soon as I release a video, and there’ll be a link to my site here for the written article. YouTube is also the best place to leave a comment. I read all of them and respond to as many as I can!
Affiliate links:
Buy direct from Creality: https://shrsl.com/4ff8i
Amazon:
Creality Halot One Plus: https://geni.us/0quuE2
Creality Wash and Cure Station UW-01: https://geni.us/3PxY526
Creality Water Washable Resin Plus (Skin): https://geni.us/r5Cd3B
IPA 5L: https://geni.us/xmowy
Silicon mats (2): https://geni.us/F3MZSCi
Funnel and filters: https://geni.us/8Hxja
Nitrile gloves: https://geni.us/hwFsvo (I’ve found these cheaper locally in the UK at Toolstation). These are the ones I use for cycling repairs so are probably tougher than you really need.
Heavy duty wipes: https://geni.us/1ALgwoY
Soft paper towels: https://geni.us/0BN28rX
Models featured in video:
Cones of Calibration: https://www.tableflipfoundry.com/
Amerilabs Town: https://ameralabs.com/blog/town-calibration-part/
Eiffel Tower: https://www.printables.com/model/572-eiffel-tower
Leaning Tower of Pisa: https://www.printables.com/model/261584-leaning-tower-of-pisa-italy
Sagrada Familia: https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-sagrada-familia-complete-barcelona-57814
Creality Halot One Plus build plate drainer: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5863579
Card wallet: https://www.printables.com/model/246961-cascade-card-wallet-print-in-place/files
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