Spacious Print Area

With 320 x 320 x 400 mm to play with, you’re never likely to be short on room if you’re printing on a Mingda Rock 3 Pro, outshining even large-format-deemed printers such as the Artillery Sidewinder or Creality’s latest CR-10 Smart.

Expect to fit pretty much any model you want on this thing and then some. One-piece, full-sized cosplay helmets spring to mind. Should you want even more print space from Mingda, you might want to look at the D4 Pro and its massive 420 x 420 x 400 mm build space.

Direct Drive Extruder

Another noteworthy feature of the Rock 3 Pro is its direct drive extruder. In general, having a direct drive setup over a Bowden extruder allows for more filaments to be handled worry-free, especially flexible ones.

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Direct Drive vs Bowden Extruder: The Differences

On the Rock 3 Pro, the printhead is comprised of a non-branded dual gear Bondtech extruder, a non-branded E3D hot end, and dual cooling fans that should ensure a smooth feeding and extruding of filament even at higher speeds.

Precise Movement

The printer promises precise axis movement with a belt to synchronize both individually powered Z-axis lead screws as well as anti-backlash nuts and dual Y-axis guide rods. To keep the belts on the X- and Y-axis tight over time, the Rock 3 Pro has little knobs to adjust the tension of the belts as and when you see fit.

What’s more, the Rock 3 Pro offers a “Baby step function,” allowing you to move the axis up and down by as little as 0.01 mm, a truly tiny amount. More commonly, 0.1 mm is the lowest increment found on most FDM printers.

We’re still not exactly sure how useful this function will be in practice, but it’s probably fair to say that more control is unlikely to be a bad thing. When it comes to something like leveling the print bed, it could mean that you can get an extra “tight” fit in that regard, but 0.01 mm is such a tiny measurement that it may not matter in practice.

Carborundum Glass Platform

Originally branded Anycubic Ultrabase and found exclusively on the company’s printers, the tempered glass print plate quickly became a fan-favorite due to its superb adhesion, without the need for extra adhesives, immaculate first layers, and easy removal of prints afterward. Nowadays, you’ll find the often-copied carborundum glass plate on most new 3D printers, as it is one of the, if not the best, bed surfaces out there.

On the Mingda 3 Pro, you can heat it to 50°C in about half a minute and up to 110°C in total. In other words, a good variety of filaments should be printable on this surface, with little to no difficulties.

Silent Mainboard

Outfitted with five TMC2208 stepper drivers, the powerful 32-bit mainboard promises to be fairly quiet, if not silent. “Silent printing” is promised in the marketing materials for this printer, but we’re yet to test a truly silent 3D printer, and we don’t think the Rock 3 Pro is going to be the one to buck that trend, particularly as silent printing is a lot more than just TMC2208’s. However, having the stepper drivers not squeal during movement does make a noticeable difference, and we wouldn’t want to miss it nowadays.

Touchscreen

Like almost all modern 3D printers, there’s a touchscreen to jab commands into. It’s a 3.5-inch color screen, and as long as it’s responsive and easy to understand, that’ll be fine – no need to attempt anything quirky with these features.

Sensors

Handy but likely not revolutionary, the Rock 3 Pro comes with a resume-print function and a filament runout sensor. The latter is placed smartly close to the filament spool holder itself. Additionally, it can rotate a full 360° to allow for positioning changes during printing and hopefully keep the flow smooth and consistent.

Two features you definitely want in a printer of its caliber.

Room to Upgrade

Mingda has left space for you to upgrade it with BLTouch sensors, should you wish to. This will give you the magical power of automatic bed leveling, which can save a bit of time and effort. It’s just one of those things that’s nice to have, which makes you wonder why they didn’t include it in the first place.