The Palette (Mosaic Manufacturing)

[KAS]

I've had the Palette for about 4 months. To this point I haven't posted anything about it mainly because it's been difficult to get calibrated for large bowden setups. aka did not work well for the Rostock Max v2.
We had issues with the ping/pong detection and would cause the filament slices to wonder out of calibration.

It looks like the beta firmware release has fixed those issues although I didn't get a chance to try it before shipping the unit back for upgrades.


Here are the guts, keep in mind that some of the acrylic pieces are being changed out for aluminium with the upgrades.

[KAS]

[KAS]

Barry Chuck has a few more pictures: https://www.flickr.com/photos/90025904@ ... 7337313316

Here is one of my testing videos working on the calibration. The print at the end just started loosing the slice calibration, also noted during the transition tower purge around 2:49.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMhAkVFpgho

[joe]

This machine looks like it will be nightmare of horrors. Do you think there will ever be any reliability to it? There is enough to go wrong with just a single filament and extruder. It does look cool though.

[626Pilot]

I got mine a couple weeks ago. There is no power switch (yeah...), the cooling fan roars even when none of the heaters are on, and it doesn't work with KISSlicer. I've tossed it into a corner and don't know when I'll have time to mess with it. The unnecessarily loud cooling fan is putting me off the whole idea. I don't want that thing noising up my workshop all day!

[DeltaCon]

I've tossed it into a corner and don't know when I'll have time to mess with it. The unnecessarily loud cooling fan is putting me off the whole idea.

I googled a bit because I never heard of this before. I would have thought that it is a cheaper alternative to multi-extrusion. Until I saw the price... Not something I would "toss in a corner" because of a loud fan

[KAS]

I've been crazy busy and haven't had much time to play around with it, or the printer for that matter.

Large Delta's present an issue due to the length of the bowden tube, not to mention placement of the device in-order for the filament detection to work correctly.
I'd say this is more suitable for Cartesian machine where filament chain is much shorter and color corrections happen faster. As it stands, any color corrections have to work through 600mm of tube before the corrected color transition hits the nozzle. ( this is after 200mm tube that the Palette normally uses.) So far this hasn't caused any issues, but it requires a larger transition tower which wastes larger amounts of filament.

Noise isnt really an issue for me as it's about as loud as my power supply in the printer. The power button would be nice, but they also don't want people turning off the machine while it has a chance of the filament being in the melt zone of the splice operation. It only heats up during that operations, hence causing a jam if the Palette tries to cold feed. With the newest firmware, we have a way to clear jams and force the heater to come on to clear the filament chain if needed.

Hopefully soon, I'll get more free time to mess around with it again.

[mhackney]

I've been trying to get one of these but I'm not willing to pay and wait for 6+ months. I have a delta with an effector mounted extruder I'd love to try thin on. If anyone has one they'd like to lend or sell, let me know!

[626Pilot]

I've been trying to get one of these but I'm not willing to pay and wait for 6+ months. I have a delta with an effector mounted extruder I'd love to try thin on. If anyone has one they'd like to lend or sell, let me know!

I will eventually have time to mess with it, when other tasks calm down. If I try it, and decide I don't want it, I will sell it to you.

[mhackney]

I bit the bullet with the sale going on now. http://www.sublimelayers.com/2017/06/mo ... egins.html

I'm going to set it up between my Rostock Max V3 (highly modified) and the D300VS so I can use either or to print. I am getting a second encoder to make this painlessly easy.

[wdmarine]

I am interested in the Palette, as well, however my understanding is it will only work with Cura and S3D. I have grown very attached to the results from Kisslicer and really don't want to stop using it. Is there a way around this?

Also, I have tried to gain an understanding of how the Palette uses Chroma and how it then coordinates in real time with the gcode the printer is running, however I have not seen that explained anywhere. Likely I have missed the obvious, or, my assumption of how it works is incorrect.

[KAS]

I would assume any slicer that handles dual+ extrusion would work. But I've only used S3D.

The quick and dirty.

Slice different parts of the model using a different extruder for each color. (up to 4 colors). This is the same process for any multi color print, for the most part.
Pass that gcode into the Chroma program which generates the color splicing algorithm and adds the transition towers calculations. Chroma will outputs two files, 1. new gcode for printer, 2. config file for the Pallet. (That tells the Pallet when to create color splices and how long)

The pallet uses a digital encoder inline of the filament chain. This measures precisely how much filament has been used and detects the specific calibration pauses.
Each color transition tower has a built in pause timer at the same specific location. With no movement at all, the digital encoder will detect when the color transition should happen.

Since the Pallet knows exactly how long each filament splice was created, it compares the actual filament that crossed the encorder and adjust for any errors in the future created splices.

[wdmarine]

Thank you KAS!

[wdmarine]

I was notified the other day that a new Palette + (plus) is being shipped at the end of July. Among other improvements, it will have an improved enclosed method for splicing that will create a splice as strong as the filament itself.

You can read more about all the improvements here:
https://www.mosaicmanufacturing.com/blogs/news/multi-material-printing-with-palette-plus

I have a Rostock Max v3 with an E3D v6 hotend and a BondTech QR extruder, which is pushing filament through a 1.8mm ID PTFE tube. I would love to hear from folks who have the Palette and are using it with the Rostock and a bowden tube whether or not they think the new improvements with the Palette + will address any issues they have run into.

[626Pilot]

They are offering existing customers $100 off one of the new machines. I'd rather send the existing one back, give them $100, and have them swap in the new splicer!

[KAS]

$249 for the upgrade. +shipping to Canada https://www.mosaicmanufacturing.com/pro ... to-palette

Not sure if it's worth it. I just wish they would sell the parts and the upgrade/calibration procedures.