Peopoly Magneto X 3D printer review

The Magneto X from Peopoly was the company’s first FDM 3D printer. Furthermore, it included linear motors to do away with belts and pulleys. After examining the technical aspects of this system previously, I set out to give this machine a proper review. After many hours of tuning, printing and fitting updated parts, we aim to answer two questions. Is this printer ideal for engineering style filaments, and does it ‘just work’ or require a level of tinkering?

This machine was provided free of charge by Peopoly for the purposes of review. The previous, prototype Magneto X was donated to a school. This printer has been tested in accordance with my review policy. All opinions expressed are my own.

0:00 Introduction

0:49 Specs and price

2:33 Unboxing and setup

3:42 Enclosure

4:51 Constantly fitting updated parts

6:48 Slicer profiles and frequent tuning

9:13 Test prints

11:17 Suitability for engineering materials

13:28 Just works vs Tinkering

14:47 What the Magneto X does well

15:51 Conclusion

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[peopoly]

Hi, I’m Mark Peng, founder of Peopoly.

Thank you for the video and the feedback, and thanks to everyone who has shared their thoughts in the comments.

We launched the Magneto X a year ago at ERRF with the goal of creating a printer featuring a linear motor system, a full metal build far heavier duty than typical consumer machines (the Mag X weighs 30kg), and a high-flow toolhead. It was an ambitious project at this price point, and we dedicated all our engineering resources to it. However, we were still overwhelmed by the challenges. Pre-orders were delayed, and we faced significant pressure to ship. As we gained more experience with the Magneto X, we identified ways to improve it, leading to several updates. These updates were detailed in our July 5th blog, and we began sending free upgrade kits to existing users.

In hindsight, we should have taken an additional two months to fine-tune the printer and pushed the shipping date back by another two months.

Moving forward, here’s what the Peopoly team will do:

- We will continue to actively support our users on Discord and via email. We’ve been sending parts and replacements whenever needed. Feel free to join our Discord server and talk directly with our users.

- We still have a few upgrade kits left to send out to pre-order customers. We are speeding up the process and plan to have all kits shipped by the end of September.

- Next week, we will release a driver tuning tool and guides to assist users with motor calibration.

- We are also fine-tuning Orca profiles for our materials and will upload them as soon as they are ready.

Thank you all again for your continued support and patience!

[TankErdin]

Mine is awful. I have owned it for months, and have spent all of that time dealing with their support team, trying to diagnose and fix various issues. I'm close to having replaced most of the machine at this point. Do not buy. Avoid at all costs.

Update: after a lot of back and forth and some initial troubleshooting with my replacement unit, I can say that I am now a satisfied customer. I will leave this up as is. I don't think that this machine for everyone, but for someone looking for a larger format printer, this is a fun platform to both experiment with and to use. Thank you again to the Peopoly team for all your help.

[MumrikDK]

If the motors don't immediately result in superior quality, then what is the point? Lower maintenance?

[PoiTEE]

People have issues with the FLSun Delta and the lack of fixes for a similar priced machine. I applaud Mark and his team with their commitment to the community to help make the printer better. I do have one, it is an early testing unit and they have been great working through every issue with me. Like stated in the comments I have also had issues with PETG but switching to a non steel nozzle has fixed the issue. Just saying I would rather have a company that cares and wants to improve upon and listen to the feedback of the community and customers. This is the first commercially available printer of its kind and the first FDM printer from Peopoly, any chance of looking at the positives in this situation? My experience working with Mark and his team has been stellar, I am sure they are willing to fix whatever problems come before them in whatever ways possible.

[obediahflemenschieme]

What a great machine! I had zero experience with 3D printing and was a bit reluctant to purchase the Magneto-X, but my goal was to make functional parts. Mine arrived with the bed mounted, and I only had to mount the screen and filament holder. My small outside office is too far from my router to connect, so I used a Cat 5 cable and connected that to my mesh system - it works very well. I did a few test parts with good results, so I made a helical gear using the provided PETG-CF. I was amazed at how well it turned out. Other than a few bubbles from the filament not being dry enough, I can say that even if you're not a 3D printer guru, the Peopoly Magneto-X rocks! My first order of business is to make a few filament dryer boxes and tweak a few settings to get the accuracy spot-on.

[jonbondy]

Nice review! I would have appreciated a thorough comparison of print speeds vs the Bambu X1C and the Prusa XL.

[lnfotron]

I love mine, huge improvement from my heavily modded cr-10 v2

[theOGBitSlinger]

For that $ I’d want something a little more turn-key.

[thethubbedone]

I'm trying to imagine, as an engineer, explaining to my boss that the printer we bought needs /any/ amount of work to produce the expected parts. It would not be a fun conversation.

[xXKisskerXx]

which "production version" lol.. I have mine and I still don't have a unit that has all the things the 'current' buyable model has. While I have discovered a few problems - we haven't been able to solve my original problem of the first layers are not going down properly.

Peopoly is working on a LED strip as well... but again, it seems like they just needed another year or so to get all this data and THEN release it. There are some QoL/nice to haves on the latest model that my model simply can't get. (drilled/tapped holes in the extrusions required) for like the top of the Z screws having a new retention system.

From what I know there is the "beta" unit, the "pre purchase" unit, the "upgraded pre purchase" unit and the "currently purchasable pre purchase unit" each with slightly different hardware, but just... far too many changes to be considered the same actual printer. We went into 'that's great they are working on it' into "ok this is a nightmare to troubleshoot based on which version you actually have' really, really fast.

[ficklecycler]

Great review. The printer has a lot of promise but still a little ways to go. What I think is important is that it seems like it's actively moving in the right direction. I'm currently evaluating one and I'll reserve judgement till I have a little more time with it. Something that potential buyers may find interesting is that there are a ton of tweaks on printers shipping now that aren't even on Michael's "production" printer. Some of those I can think of include ~retaining brackets at the top of the lead screws, ~beefier 1 piece Z carriage brackets, ~the steppers are sunk into the deck now (potentially a little more Z?), ~wider stance to the feet, ~deleted the side door option, ~new pattern for electronics cover, ~internal wire management, ~yet another wifi antenna design, ~cable chain differences, ~countersink and hardware changes, ETC. Not all upgrades, some are just optimizing production or efficiency I imagine. For example, they are back to shipping the bed attached, but are doing it differently to avoid damage. The point is, they aren't sitting idle with this thing, they really are TRYING to make it something good.

[obediahflemenschieme]

After ironing out a few minor issues (with the great support from Peopoly), I am making excellent functional parts. I am very happy that I have this machine.

[terryclair]

I love the idea of linear motors on all axis. But I'm so use to using the Bambu machines just by turning them on and hitting print that I'm spoiled.

[kitcarlson]

I was having trouble printing PETG with a hardened steel nozzle. I changed to bimetal that was plated copper with hard steel tip. All globs from sticking to nozzle went away! Went on with great nylon and PCCF prints. It would be interesting for you to review bimetal nozzle on this printer vs HS, running Orca slicer calibrations.

[Kurtis_mtb]

Great video Michael when is the next tt racing video coming out I really enjoy watching them

[SkateSoup]

Worth mentioning that its not a completely clean build of klipper just yet, though there's a bunch of pending commits from them to get into a clean klipper 12, so we'll see what the timeline is.

I've had mine since May, and i did go in knowing there was going to be tinkering needed and time for them to update things with the price break (it was 1400) we got in that preorder wave. I agree its not amything near turnkey yet, but they do keep progressing, customer support when issues pop up has been great, and they have been very receptive of community feedback, so i am hopimg it'll get there eventually.

I did have to replace a loadcell thanks possibly to slightly confusing z up/down movement icons, which they've I think fixed in the latest firmware, but since then I've had a good experience with it. Granted, I'm only using PLA and PLA+ so far, and i know i have to run new calibration test prints for each brand/type/color of filament. With the medium melt zone and the .4 nozzle, generally my flow tests measure 23-24 mm^2/s, so i have my PLA profiles set 21-22 depending to give a bit of a buffer. Brands, if it's helpful to anyone, are Inland/eSun PLA+, eryone pla high speed, 3d fuel pro pla, and the obligatory flashforge burnt titanium pla everyone on earth got in the prime day sale. I have found it doesn't like the newer cardboard spool Inland stuff as much as my other printers, layer adhesion on that has been iffy, even when bumpimg up temps.

I know that I've been super lucky in not running into some issues, and some people have had an absolutely awful time with their units no matter how much tinkering or part replacing they've done. Kissler, who commented here, has gone through it, i feel really bad for all he's done that hasn't worked. The vertical line artifact issue he first brought up is something that seems to happen for a lot of people, myself included, I'm hoping Propoly can chase that down.

Bed flatness is something that a lot of people have dealt with as well, I had a larger range than I'd like, but i mostly print smaller parts so i haven't been as impacted by that.

The other night i wanted templates to cut foam for lining boxes for a project ive been working on. I measured the space with my calipers, threw those numbers into tinkercad, made sure I was using outer wall first in the slicer and sent it. The first print worked great, and the resulting foam pieces fit perfectly, so accuracy is definitely there once you've done the tuning and fiddled with slicer settings. It's been happily cranking out boxes for that project at speed too, filament just seems to evaporate and watching the spool turning continuously as it's going at 21mm^2/s hasn't gotten old yet. I need to order a bunch more filament.

If you're thinking of getting one, size is definitely a thing, but also keep power in mind. It's a 1000-watt mains bed that pulls 9 and change amps when the bed is initially heating up. You could get away with it on a 15 amp circuit if there isn't a lot else on it, and many are, but if you've got a 20 amp circuit outlet you can get to where it might fit, that might be a better location.

So yeah, a bit of a mixed bag, and I've been lucky to avoid some of the problems that have popped up, but now I've got things dialed in, for my use case so far I'm quite happy with mine and looking forward to future updates.

I'd love to see your TPU profile if you wind up publishing it. I've been thinking about using it for another project and was going to wait to look into it until someone came up with a good profile to start with.

[StormBurnX]

6:16 I just wanna say, any discussion about you being an 'influencer' aside, this kind of back-and-forth work to not just improve things under the hood but also keep you in the loop, help tune things on your end, and even supply better, improved parts, is.... really freakin' amazing?? like, SO many companies will just send out some flashy, pretty, hot new printer to youtube influencers and be like "yo this is our thing tell everyone how much you love it" and then you never hear from them again. Meanwhile Peopoly is out here sending you every little improvement as they work on it and such.

It's still a damn shame that companies can't just, y'know, wait until their product is properly finished before launching it. Whether it's game companies or physical products, this seems to be a trend. But on the upside, I think there's something particularly special about the maker community, this idea that even when a product is 'done' or 'finished' and shipped out to consumers, it can still have a lifetime of improvements. Even something as small as those simply little prints to hold the acrylic panels more stably - absolutely great idea there and I think a fine example of how even a theoretically 'finished' product can still be continuously enhanced by both the community and the company.

slightly related tangent - I work in the industry of document/paperwork processing and my day-to-day involves babysitting a few half-a-million-dollar machines that are just glorified automated scanners. They have sensors out the wazoo, and one of the common problems with the machines, is that the row of sensors to track where a paper is along the ~12 feet of machinery, is right at the exact same height as the top hole in a 3-hole-punched paper. Unfortunately this means that the machine - which detects paper EDGES - detects the hole as the end of a paper and the start of a new paper and gets confused. the company recently pushed an update that simply checks the timing of that sensor and, if it's within a certain range, essentially treats it like a debounce. Now the half-a-million dollar machine is no longer locking up every time a three-hole-punched paper goes through it. (for those wondering I work in remittance processing and the machine is an ibml fusion.) I feel like this sort of thing, where the community goes "hey this could be done better" and then the company goes "here's what we've done to add XYZ feature or improve on ABC problem" is what makes the maker community so great to be a part of.

(edit: just saw that they're also active here in the comments. Wild. Love that companies are adapating to the internet in this kind of way, feels almost halfway between twitter and a forum, hah!)

[heavyhemi]

While i do feel that at this price point, things should be a bit more polished, at the same time my first and only printer started as a ender 3 v2 neo that is so heavily modified its hard to even call it a v2 neo.
Most of my upgrades have been around the motion system, from drivers, motors, rails, belts, pulleys and considering the magneto x eliminates all of that, it may well be worth it to have basically the perfect motion system out of the box. No need to calibrate belt tension, then re calibrate for x/y dimensional changes due to belt stretch. no vfa's from belt edges rubbing on the side of the pulley due to the pulleys not being square with each other, causing the belt to track side to side.

If the main downside at this point (free upgrade replacement parts aside) is the hotend. How easy is it to replace with aftermarket options? Again at this price point, seems kinda crazy but considering the motion system, idk?

[gonegliding]

It certainly sounds like Peopoly are trying to get this printer right and working with reviewers. (unlike some other companies)
I think Bambulabs have set the gold standard for turnkey printers

[FlintStone-cs]

Nice they went for open source and the magnetic drive has potential. Once early adopters help solve the issues it would make a nice production printer.