I have not used a printer but I have been researching the MSLA printers this past week, joining user groups (you need to get on the resin groups as well as those for the machines, and you also need to learn to run whatever slicer you decide to use), watching YT videos, etc, so this is my impression of what I've read, take it for what it costs you. Also, it looks like UK/Europe prices tend to be higher than USA prices, and some of the machines/resins may be harder to obtain.
For the small size the Anycubic Photon, Mars Elegoo and Epax X1 seem to be good choices, ranked in that order from low to high. The Photon appears to have a very large user base that does a lot of hacking on them. The Mars seems to be considered a step up in quality and I think it and the Epax area also noticeably faster due to their more powerful LED arrays. The Epax is the most expensive, but it has a lot more sheet metal in the chassis and seems to get the nod as the nicest quality on the design/construction. Other brands that seem popular are Peopoly (they have some SLA machines and now MSLA) and Phrozen. Epax, Peopoly and Phrozen all have midsize MSLA machines and the prices for those are in the US$800-1200 range. The latter two companies have recently released even larger MSLA machines that are running about US$1800, and it looks like Epax has a similar machine in development for release later in the year. Here's some build volume specs from low to high:
Elegoo Mars 120 x 68 x 155 mm <$300
Phrozen Shuffle 120 x 68 x 200 mm
Peopoly’s Moai 130 SLA 130 x 130 x 180
Form3 SLA 145 x 145 x 185 mm ($3500)
Phrozen Shuffle XL $1300 190 x 120 x 200 mm
Photocentric Liquid Crystal HR2 196 x 147 x 250 mm ($2500)
Epax X10 ($1199) 216 x 135 x 250 mm
Epax 13.3 inch screen printer -- TBD, likely 2 months after 10.1 inch (shipping now so early Dec maybe)
Peopoly Phenom (new, $1800 12.5" 4k) 276 x 155 x 400
Phrozen Transform (new, $1800) 292 x 165 x 400 mm
Form3L SLA 300 x 335 x 200 mm ($10K)
It appears even the sub-$300 range machines can deliver quite good prints, but they have smaller build volumes, possibly some corners cut on the materials of the chassis to hit a price point, and they will probably print slower due to lower power UV arrays. There seem to be a lot of those very small printers that are "badge engineered" items, where the manufacturer slaps on a private label and ships them out.
The FEP (or in the case of the Epax non-FEP) films and the LCDs are consumables. LCDs get rated for 300-500 hours. Of course you can damage one in much less time (usually loose bits of cured resin that get jammed into the bottom of the tank) and some apparently are going strong at 1000+ hours. Prices on the LCDs seem to be $80-140 depending on size and 2K vs 4K and some brands offer them at a lower price and those may well fit in some other brand's printers too. ChiTuBox appears to provide OEM slicer software, firmware and boards for a number of the printers.
One piece of advice that some people stress (and say that following it means they have had zero problems) is to filter your resin after every print to make sure you don't have one of those stray cured pieces that can damage/puncture the film and/or the LCD. It is extra bother, but that seems to be the voice of experience speaking.
I'm interested in using one for making foundry patterns, whether masters or actually in the sand (there are some strong/tough resins available -- look at Siraya Blu/Tenacious which may be fine for 1-3, and then there are resins for investment casting "waxes"). It turns out you can mix resins to get a blend of the capabilities, such as 10-20% Tenacious added to Blu to give it a bit of flexibility without degrading the strength. The MSLA resins are often much less than the FormLabs SLA resins, and the latter are pricey enough (along with the machine price) to give me pause about them. $40-90 (with I think a few castable resins at $150)/kg vs $150-300/kg seems pretty significant to me. I've seen photos posted by someone who is making small functional prototype parts pretty much everyday, and on one photo where he was holding a part with the largest dimension of 20mm his fingerprints were much coarser than the layer lines on the part.
I'm looking at the mid-size at minimum, and might go for one of the new large format models though that means waiting to see what the larger Epax is like when released. The Phrozen Shuffle XL 2019 has been released recently with significant changes in the electronics (no longer using a Raspberry Pi in the machine) so going for the new version may be a good idea. The Transform and Phenom are shipping but it appears those may be later tier Kickstarter order fulfillment machines rather than full retail production parts.
At this moment I'm tending towards the Phrozen, Peopoly and Epax. Epax seems to have a "heavy duty build" rep and they have a USA partner that can do sales/support instead of having to deal with Taiwan/Hong Kong/China direct.
It would be nice if the screens, which are basically phone/tablet stuff, were more squarish instead of the long rectangles. I'm not sure that I'd need more than the 200-250mm X travel (400mm in the new big machines) but they all seem a bit scant in the Y direction. Maybe the problem is that the parts I've been looking at tend to be more square than long rectangles, so on some of the mid-size machines I'm wondering if they might end up needing to be done as two parts and then glued (which you can do with the resin, just cure it with some UV) together.
Use of high levels of anti-aliasing can swell file sizes a lot, and not all models benefit from it. Too much may also degrade fine details, it is something that needs to be experimented with on your particular parts.
One thing to keep in mind is throughput. A small machine may need to spend more time on each layer for curing, slowing down the height/hour speed. But if you need to print more stuff than will fit on the small machine then you get to double or triple the print times for the multiple jobs, where if you have a big machine you may be able to do them all in one print. I've seen photos of these printers being used in dental labs and they've got the entire build volume packed full of false teeth prints, maximizing the number of prints for the print run. I guess time is money.
YMMV, always wear a helmet, and verify things you read from random people on the Internet. But I hope this at least gives you some more information than you had before.
cheers,
Michael
