 Today, we take a look at what makes the Mingda Magician X2 a great 3D printer and the reasons why I'm adding it to my list of recommended 3D printers. My name's Jim and this is the engine tech. So recently Mingda reached out and asked if I wanted to check out their Magician X2. And to be 100% honest, I didn't necessarily want to check it out because to me it was just another i3 clone. At least that's what I thought. But I said no at first and then they reached out again and they said, hey, it will be worth it, we promise. So I told them to send it over and let's check it out. But I have to admit, there's something about this printer that totally stands out and I definitely was not expecting it and we'll talk about that in a minute. When it got here, I threw it on the desk to unbox and I have to admit I was very frustrated because it came in styrofoam. I was getting this thing out and there were styrofoam bits literally everywhere. I had a mess going on with styrofoam. I was pretty frustrated and I do have to say, if you're manufacturing anything, please don't use styrofoam. Mingda, please stop using styrofoam. Real quick, I just wanted to jump in because the video was edited and ready to be posted tomorrow morning, but Mingda sent me an email about the styrofoam in the box. They let me know that because of all the feedback, because of our feedback and the feedback from people who have already purchased this printer, they actually put plastic around the bottom of the printer and on the gantry, starting with any printers that are shipped in July. So everybody out there should have a little less styrofoam now and thank you so much, Mingda, for listening to the people, listening to the community and helping to fix this issue. Now back to it. But then, once I got it out of the box, assembly was super fast. It was very easy to assemble. I didn't have to really know anything about 3D printing. The instructions were pretty clear and it actually went together very quick and very easily. Also it didn't take me long, maybe like 15 minutes or so to actually assemble the whole thing. It was pretty quick. I would have to say it was probably one of the easiest i3s that I've ever assembled and if I had never done a printer before, it would be pretty dang easy. The Mingda Magician X2 is actually packed full of features and that is great to see in an entry level 3D printer. So it does come with a PTFE lined hotend but they do offer an all metal swappable hotend for this thing, which is pretty cool. And that's powered by a dual gear direct drive extruder and the whole assembly actually comes off with two, yes, only two bolts, one in the top here and one in the back. It's very easy to take this whole module off. So if you ever need to fix it or swap out that hotend for the PTFE lined or the all metal, it's easy, literally two bolts. It also has a really cool built in temperature indicating light down here that changes color to indicate the temperature of the machine, that kind of thing. It's pretty cool to see on the hotend, not a deal breaker, but it's nice that they added it. Now you might be wondering to yourself, does this thing have a filament run out sensor and the answer is yes. And on top of yes, they actually put it in the right place, right here, right on top of the extruder assembly built into the hotend. That means your whole filament can run out and it will not stop. It won't trigger it until it's right here into the top of that extruder. I love that. This is where, in my opinion, these sensors should be placed and Mingda got that right. Now it does come with a flexible bed sheet right here that can pop right off the bed and it allows you to flex off these prints. You just pop up the flexible bed sheet if I can grab it and you're able to kind of literally flex the print right off the bed. I love that. I love flexible bed sheets and it's awesome that you included this because honestly it's 2023 and they should be included on all printers now. On top of that, it's a 230x230x260 build area. If I spin the printer around, you're going to see that the gantry is powered by two motors down here and it also has the two lead screws with capture bearings up top that do move a little bit. That way if somehow the lead screw is a little bit loose, it'll actually wobble in there a little bit, which is great. But it's also really good to see two motors and two lead screws on these printers. I know a lot of people in the end of three days wish there was dual Z on a lot of their printers and now that's pretty much on all of them, which is pretty cool. Also if we look down here, it's hard to see, but there's optical homing, which means that when this comes down, it homes on both sides and it should even out your ex-gantry if your ex-gantry is lopsided or off. Another feature is Mingda's 16-point auto bed leveling. They do call it self-developed. I'm not sure exactly what that means, but I do know that it works. It works pretty fast and it works pretty dang good and you can do it with one touch right through the screen. Speaking of touch screens, it does come with a touch screen in the front and it actually was pretty good. In my testing, it was responsive, it worked, the screens were laid out very well and it was pretty easy to use. Overall, pretty good touch screen for a 3D printer. I think a lot of them are going that way and they're way better than they were even two years ago. Future Jim here. There is a firmware update for this printer that I totally forgot to do before I filmed this and I wanted to jump in and say that I popped it in. It was super simple to do. You took the .bin file and another folder and dropped it straight on an SD card, put it in, turned it on and the whole thing updated. The touch screen is much better now. It was pretty good before, but it's very good now. All the menus are really good, really easy to use and they added the load and unload. I think it was missing one of those buttons before, but they added that in and so I just wanted to pop in and say that I did upgrade the firmware. The touch screen is great and I love the menus now in this. It makes it pretty simple. If you're getting value from today's video, please smash that like button and if you want to see more videos on 3D printing, CNC and lasers, please consider hitting that subscribe button. I really appreciate it. Now back to it. Something else I really like about this is that you can use a USB stick, an SD card or USB-C right in the front of the machine and if we look on this side of the machine, there's actually a little slot where you can store an SD card if you're not using it or you have an extra one, you can toss it in there and store it or you can put your USB drive in here as well. It does clear the bed so you don't have to worry about that and it's just nice to have that little extra storage if you have like one or two of these running around. Now another feature to point out is the bed tensioners. There's one for your Y and one for your X here. Just turn them one way or another. It allows you to tighten or loosen your belts. They're built in. Some of these machines now are coming with those but it is standard on the Mingda Magician X2. Another spec is the upgraded control board. They say it's a much upgraded version from the original and I'll take their word for it because I never had the original so I can't compare that. And another thing that I really like about this thing is how clean these cables are. They just seem super clean, very durable, like they're going to last a long time and they're the ribbon cable style much like we saw in the Artillery series before and if you turn around this thing has one of the most beefy bed cables I've ever seen. It actually gets screwed in to the back plate so no one's going to be complaining that this thing is going to come loose. There's a clip and two screws that hold this thing into the back of the bed. Not to mention how beefy and durable this thing is. So that's just another great thing about this printer. But enough about features already, let's check out some of the prints that came off this machine. The first thing I printed was on the SD card and it was this little bunny. It came out very good. It was actually pretty fast to print and besides a little bit of wispy stringing between the ears, maybe like three little strings, I did not clean this up on purpose because I wanted to show exactly how it came off the bed but it came out really good. The next thing I printed was the clock spring fire truck. We debuted this on Hot Makes just a couple of weeks ago and this thing is so much fun to print. Again, I didn't clean any of this up and I just wanted to show exactly how it came off. I am using the original MINGDA magician profile that's on Prusa Slicer and I've not tweaked it at all. I literally just made sure that the bed size was correct and that's it. So there is some tweaking to do in Prusa Slicer but this thing came out very, very good. It rolls. It's actually all moved right off the bed and I can't say anything bad except for maybe a little bit of stringing again but that's got to be profile related because I didn't use the provided profile either. I literally just dropped this on and sent it without any tweaks at all. Overall, a really good second print. Actually first print that I sliced if you want to look at it like that but very, very good second print of this machine. Another thing I printed was the clock spring fidget skull. Now a whole bunch of people are actually printing these at Murph before they were leased and it was super cool. Brought on by our friend over at Filament Stories and clock spring of course. You saw me flex this off of the bed a little bit earlier in the video and I think just looking at it it came out so good. Pretty good first layers and I got to say it's nice and fidgety and flexible. Just the way this thing prints makes it just feel so cool to play with. Also all of the prints today were done in TH3D Spaghetti. This is a dual color filament and there'll be a link in the description below where you can get this filament and save some money on it. I have no complaints at all with this print here. So earlier in the video I called out something that I was not expecting that totally surprised me and stood out about the Mingda Magician X2 and it's actually being demonstrated right now. The printing. It is so quiet. I mean quiet enough that I can stand next to here and film this video while it's doing the first layers and printing in general. I'm telling you the only thing you can hear is maybe a little bit of fan noise. You have to have a little bit of fan noise to keep everything cool down but once this thing gets flying it's not any louder and this thing has got to be one of the quietest printers I have ever tested. With the world going towards very fast and very loud printers I mean I did not see this coming. Usually the cheaper beginner entry level i3 printers are not this quiet. These guys really took some time to put some quiet fans into this machine. Thank you Mingda for that because I could sit this on my desk and work next to it or within a couple feet of it and not even know it's really running except for a little bit of white noise with that little bit of fan. I'm actually going to go really close with my microphone and let's give you guys kind of a little bit of a sneak peek of what you can hear or what you can't hear here. So here you go. I don't even see it registering on the camera when I did that. So again I was super excited and super surprised at how quiet this thing is. Nice work Mingda. I mean like seriously nice work. But seriously let me know in the comments if a quieter machine even matters anymore. I know a lot of people are going faster and much louder but let me know I'd love to hear your thought do you still like the quiet machines or do you not care as long as it's fast and it gets the job done. I'm curious let me know. So overall I really like this printer. Mingda you did a very good job right out of the box. It's very good for somebody who's just getting into 3D printing. A perfect entry level 3D printer. And at the time of this filming I believe it's 349 on Amazon but they have an $80 coupon bringing this down to 269 if my math is correct and you can get it down to Amazon right now for 269. I'll put a link in the description below straight to that Amazon page but you know what that's actually a really good deal for all the bells and whistles this thing comes with for 269. Very easy to start right out of the box. It works. It works pretty dang well and I will be adding this to the list of my 3D printers that I actually suggest to people when they're starting out. So that actually means a lot. There's not a lot on that list. Thank you again Mingda for sending over the Magician X2. I really appreciate that and if you haven't seen this video you definitely want to check that out.