It’s not a complicated process conceptually, but the combination of temperatures, materials, and settings for the height of layers and other variables within the slicing software and the printer controls can be overwhelming. Unlike many Asian 3D printers, the machine doesn’t play an annoying song at power up; it just displays a logo splash screen briefly and then heads to the main menu on the touchscreen. I suspect it has to do with the glass plate, which is absolutely flat, and does not warp over time like metal or polymer plates.

There are 3D Printing services available, but it’s not nearly as huge a market as the hype led us to believe it would be (is it ever?The material for extrusion is fed from a reel that attaches to the top of the gantry into the top of the printhead and through a heated nozzle. I decided to print the calibration dragon as my first print since I like to use it to calibrate my retraction and fine-tune my printers.

Carborundum Glass Platform:The 4th generation glass platform enable the hotbed heat up quicker and prints adhere better without the warping. I found them to be quite good, although sometimes a bit stringy, which can likely be solved with some tweaks to the retraction settings. The auto-leveling and the sound factor are especially important, and the build volume is impressive.The X2 got a fashionable makeover, with a snazzy blue logo and glowing LED light that doubles as a heat gauge. stl files, so whatever the print settings were when the GCode was created is what you are stuck with (I checked the Mingda web site under downloads and it was the same there).