Skip to main content
Discussion Topic
User avatar

1st Impressions: Somewhere between "Meh" & disappointed

I got my Palette 3 Pro this week. I paid $799 for the “Air Shipping” September delivery option.

  • On Sep 10, I received an email saying the schedule was still on track to ship to customers paying for the “Air Shipping” option within September.
  • On Sep 28, “Air Shipping” customers would no receive them by early Oct.
  • On Oct 21, the update indicated End of Oct was the new date.
  • And finally, On Oct 27, I was notified the shipment was being processed.
  • The shipment was sent via UPS Ground lol

Repeated over-promising and under-delivering… But not the end of the world.

Now that I’ve unboxed my Palette 3 Pro, the first thing I noticed is the dead-end setup links in the emails they sent:

Block Image

Not the end of the world. I found this article on the support site. And when clicking on links such as “Please review this article for more detailed instructions and videos on how to physically set up Palette with your printer.”:

Block Image

Still not the end of the world.

The instructions are okay, but overly vague at times. There are several references to attaching the extruder clip to your printer, for example, but nothing that actually indicates how except for (in some cases) that the square Velcro should be used.

—————————————————————————————-

Okay, I ordered the Palette 3 “Pro”. And when I think of the word “Pro”, there are several synonyms which come to mind. None of which include Velcro, or duct tape. I paid $800 for an accessory which, in many cases, costs more than the printers themselves, and was provided one clip with a few squares of Velcro which is to serve as the primary interface between the accessory and printer. At this point, I’m feeling a little embarrassed for Mosaic.

—————————————————————————————-

If you were lucky, some links point you here: Collections - Thingiverse . Last night, however, most links were pointing here: Designs - Thingiverse which is a mess of a collection and I didn’t know where to begin.

Recommendations for Mosaic:

  • Under-Promise & Over-Deliver
    • Communicate changes to the delivery dates before the delivery date has passed, not after
    • Do not thank people who have paid for Sep delivery for being patient in Oct when in fact they are not being patient. It is appropriate to request patience, but not to assume it.
    • Do not re-write the delivery agreement as it suits you. When you sell customers a Sep delivery date, do not decide at some point that a Sep shipping date is the equivalent despite knowing the logistics network will constrain the delivery date to Oct (let alone the actual delivery date of Nov)

Block Image

  • When you provide an option for air shipping which costs $100 above the other option, ship it air, not ground… to the customer.
  • Know your customer base
    • Include extruder clips for at least the top 5 printers used
    • Or allow customers to select which printer they use when ordering and have the extruder clip designed for their printer included in the box
    • For all other printers, have specific links to clips which have been validated by your team to work with that specific printer
  • Do not provide links to dead-ends in your “getting started” articles.
  • Respect the difference of a crowd-funded campaign and a pre-order campaign.
    • Crowd-Funded: Unvalidated but worthy concepts, many times executed by start-ups who have no customer base and reputation. The concept is still in development.
    • Pre-Order: Validated concepts but not yet mass produced, existing product (unreleased), company and reputation.

I haven’t used the product yet but it definitely feels like a crowd funded campaign launched under the guise of a pre-order. And I was thoroughly disappointed to learn that OctoPrint would not be supported because I searched before ordering and was under the impression it would be.

Mosaic: I’m not trying to troll and hope you’ll consider this feedback in future releases. The price point of $800 places you in a segment beyond what I’ve seen delivered. Hopefully, I’ll retract that statement once I’ve actually used the product.

With regards and an open mind.

Reply to discussion Subscribe to discussion

Is this a worthwhile discussion?

Score 11

Comments:

I’m officially downgrading my impression from “in between Meh & Disappointed” to “Totally Frustrated and Highly Disappointed”.

More details here if anyone has any ideas or experience to share.

by

Dexter,

Unfortunately, I echo your sentiments completely. “Totally Frustrated and Highly Disappointed” are spot on.

Canvas is such a quantum leap backward. Painting and stamping are good ideas but overall, the entire user experience is painful and the resulting prints are terrible. It's not the printer. My RailCore II ZLT has been dialed in for well over a year and prints that are sliced with Simplify3D come out perfect. The same model sliced in Canvas takes 10 times longer to slice and the resulting print quality is not good.

by

Great news....they are consistent. Waited and waited for this thing and not a darn thing has improved and furthermore the USB they shipped is empty, but I am told to use a file on there...what file? Oh, you know what? They have no faith in their own equipment. In the warranty they disallow returns. Who does that? Won't load the alt firmware to work with Prusa so I am told it "should" work with a CR-6 SE running the community edition software.... So taking another printer out of service. I now refer to this "thing" as The Brick in all correspondence.

by

I have a p3pro and use it as a papeer weight. I 've had the machine for months, printed the key chain and failed on every attempt since. Could do with a prpper manual. I find it is like a detective story its all there if you can find it.. With Luck I may eventually win.

by

Sorry to hear that you're having issues, I'd be happy to help. Please send me an e-mail at jonny@mosaicmfg.com with a summary of the issues that you're seeing and I can definitely guide you in the right direction.

by

Show 1 more comment

Add a comment

8 Replies

User avatar

Hi Dexter,

concerning late delivery. Please trust me, as I am working as a forwarding agent and I see the delays in transport every day. It is not easy for an outstanding person to understand, but but the hole transport chains are totaly lost at the moment. So please do not blame Mosaic for this, it is not their fault.

I am looking forward to get my Palette 3pro with ocean delivery.

Regards

Manfred

Was this reply helpful?

Score 2

Comments:

You make a good point.

by

Add a comment
User avatar

I can agree with some of the content about first impressions. I was a little surprised with paying such a price (for preorder and waiting for some time) that there would not be some consumable spare parts included such as cutting blades and switches include like there were when I purchased the Palette 2 Pro. Yes, I understand that there are part shortages and supply chain issues, but for the price we are paying we should receive some spare parts to maintain our units. It will be sad when we have to replace them and they are not available because they are needed to continue building new units for sale (which also will need spare parts at some point in time). Time will tell on how dependable the unit is and I look forward to putting it to work.

Was this reply helpful?

Score 1

Comments:

I can agree with your agree. I have yet to make my first successful print except for the keychain, which failed from setup and I couldn't re-run setup to try it again. I had to find the model online and run manual calibrations. They said just reset the Palette to factory settings to rerun the calibration. Apparently after you upgrade the firmware, which did work however I had to go out and buy a wifi access point because the Palette can not connect to my wifi, unlike 32 other devices in my home. After upgrading the firmware I tried factory reset but it just sits there, spinning it's little spinner, and never does a reset. So, I'm starting to check off some boxes before I even get started getting started. I had to design my own clip for my printer (Artillery Sidewinder X2) so that took another day away from being able to use the thing. I saw videos on Youtube stating from a Mosaic rep that the Pro would come a lot moref "extra" parts. More than what, none? Oops now I've run out of room...

by

Add a comment
User avatar

To add to this, one of the reasons I upgraded to the 3 Pro was to print with flexible filament but after I received it I find out TPU is not yet supported. If only they could have completed that already committed feature during all of the supply chain delays - or perhaps the supply chain was not the only problem… I believe I also saw that someone posted that the spool runout switching feature was not support yet either - I wonder what else we’ll find missing.

Was this reply helpful?

Score 2
Add a comment
User avatar

I had heard rumor that Octoprint would not be supported, and some had even canceled their order because of the drop in connection support. But I was confident(foolishly hopeful?) there would be some kind of alternate connection solution available for devices running Klipper.

I’ll probably run a test print in accessory mode soon, but there’s got to be a way to integrate two already networked devices. Still holding out hope for a solution, it’s early yet in this product’s life, and given the other delays I wouldn’t be surprised if the software is catching up along with documentation and other things Dexter mentioned. Not a good look for Mosaic, but not an uncommon business practice to push a product and polish software later.
Edit, “…Polish software later” was generous I’m coming to learn for the P3, some advertised functionality is still being developed.

Was this reply helpful?

Score 1
Add a comment
Most Helpful Answer
User avatar

The hardware is very well designed and certainly capable. Since the internals appear to be a Pi compute module running a variant of Raspbian, opening it to the community for extensions and tinkering would be amazing.

I suspect the primary concern may be security and exposing the cloud interface. Having been on the other side of this, it’s a lot easier to find reasons to say “no”. But I also think there’s good reason to believe community contributions could be a huge asset that would otherwise be impossible to realize internally.

Was this reply helpful?

Score 4

Comments:

Double-edged sword in my book. I'm all for open source solutions, but it's bad when companies lean on the community to develop an unfinished product. To be clear I don't get the impression that's what will happen here. I'd love to se Mosaic finish the basic advertised features in software with an interface that allows for independent development and innovation

by

Hmmm Well designed HW? My screen goes White during a print, after-which the screen is unresponsive until a reboot. Others have reported this problem, and it was NEVER fixed, Was going to buy more Palettes, but after I see how bad customer service is, I'm moving on. X1Carbons with an AMS can also do multiple materials also, and their customer service is great.

by

Hey Allen, sorry to hear that you're having this issue. Are you running your Palettes with the screen flipped? Also, if you've been printing a lot, we find that deleting local files helps with the white screen issue.

by

Yes, the problem is caused by the screen being flipped. Deleting local files didn't seem to make any difference. At least 2 years ago, people reported that the flipped screen causes this problem, but here we are. Not only a white screen but it completely freezes and has to be rebooted again to restore it.

by

@an36df45 Thanks for confirming. We've seen this bug pop up even after implementing fixes and updates, so we apologize that you're continuing to experience this. We'll take another look on our end, but if you could send us your log files, that would be helpful (mm3d.co/p3-logging).

by

Show 3 more comments

Add a comment
User avatar

Palette 3 was the equivalency of waking up on Christmas morning only to find that all the wrapped presents under the tree are nothing more than “empty boxes.”

The word disappointed doesn’t even come close to how upset I am with this product. I own a Palette 2S Pro, and I love that freaking thing. I rarely ever had issues with it. I could use Simplify 3D to generate GCODE and support structures, use Chroma to make it Palette ready, and send everything to OctoPrint without a hitch. In other words, Palette 2S Pro was as open as open-source comes. So when I heard that Palette 3 would support 8 materials and had a faster slicing core, I was “all-in.” Every iteration of Palette from 1 to the 2S Pro was an improvement from the last, as it should be, leaving me to believe that Palette 3 would follow suit. Needless to say, Palette 3 was the most significant step backward I have ever seen. They literally pulled a Makerbot on their entire customer base by going closed source. No outside slicers allowed, no Chroma, no Octoprint, no freedom.

Furthermore, the machine has been wildly inconsistent in its performance: (1) Either it jams, (2) doesn’t slice PLA properly, causing filament separation and thus erroring out, (3) calibration issues with multi-colored prints. I thought maybe it was the filament (too much moisture, old, etc.), but the same filament worked on the same print from my Palette 2S Pro without a hitch on its first run using the same crappy Slicer Canvas forces you to use. To be safe, I used brand new, still vacuum sealed filament only to get the same result. After spending what seems to be an eternity with Palette 3, I have yet to get a single successful print.

My advice is to stay away from Palette 3 and buy yourself a Palette 2S Pro instead.

Was this reply helpful?

Score 4

Comments:

Hi Josh, thanks for your feedback. We've always been upfront that Palette 3 will no longer be compatible with Chroma, but we are still compatible with Canvas and PrusaSlicer (mm3d.co/p2pp).

Concerning your splices, the splice core and splicing algorithm are different between P3 and P2, so splice tuning would be recommended instead of using any previous settings (mm3d.co/p3splice-tuning). We'd be happy to provide you with assistance on your splicing and calibration issues, so please feel free to reach out to us at support@mosaicmfg.com, or we can troubleshoot on this thread. We would just require some more information, such as pictures of your recent prints, pings, and other relevant information that would help us solve the issues that you're seeing. If you haven't joined already, you can also see that many users are finding success with their P3's on our Facebook group: mm3d.co/fb

by

see i find quite the opposite, i too had many issues when i first started using my P3P but i soon found out that most of it was due to my own expectations and jumping to wanting t to work out of the box, it's a brand new device and is totally different and i too had jams but i found that my hot end had a very tight tolerance for filament width which once sorted......no more issues.

My advice is to seek out some help and totally stick with a P3P because it is a great machine.

by

Add a comment
User avatar

I really wanted to add some righteous anger because my printing setup is still not supported, and the only 'plans' to support it have been vague hints that maybe some day there might be some interface for devices running Klipper. The hardware appears to be capable, though I haven't run any notably stressing prints yet because Canvas has not given me outputs I am satisfied with due to a lack of slicer settings. I strongly agree with the assessment that software and firmware has COMPLETELY fallen short of expectations, and not even met performance as advertised. And I have yet to hear any plans for what the development roadmap looks like to allay fears that users are going to get stuck with the device as-is. To Mosaic’s credit, software development has been continuing, albeit slowly.

But I'll bite my tongue on the righteous anger for now, and simply ask- is Mosaic supporting the development of P2PP?

Was this reply helpful?

Score 1

Comments:

In regards to P2PP, I have been trying to get it to work without success. I have been able to slice and generate the files, but they don't work properly. I have yet to have the P3P to detect the first ping from a P2PP job. Not enough filament is generated at the start so the first color change is early. Running the same model through Chrome at least gets me files with enough starting filament.

Shame on Mosaic for relying on a 3rd part to provided off-line support of their product. I have some models I want to print, but the licensing doesn't allow me to upload the files anywhere, so the use of Canvas is not an option. Luckily my P2P is working great with Chroma, which hasn't been updated for over 2 years!

by

Here is my P2PP setting up on Prusa

;P2PP PALETTE3_PRO

;P2PP P3_PROCESSPREHEAT

;P2PP PRINTERPROFILE=56a564b6077fa7bb84ea1c9097193a28

;P2PP LINEARPINGLENGTH=350

;P2PP SPLICEOFFSET=67

;P2PP MINSTARTSPLICE=130

;P2PP MINSPLICE=90

;P2PP ABSOLUTEEXTRUDER

;P2PP MATERIAL_DEFAULT_1_1_4

;P2PP MATERIAL_PVA_PVA_0_0_0

;P2PP MATERIAL_PVA_PLA_0_0_0

;P2PP MATERIAL_PLA_PLA_1_1_4

;P2PP MATERIAL_PET_PET_0_0_0

;P2PP EXTRAENDFILAMENT=120

;P2PP CHECKVERSION

;P2PP P3_SHOWPRINTERPAGE

;P2PP P3_HOSTNAME=YOUR-P3P

;P2PP P3_UPLOADFILE

;P2PP CONSOLEWAIT

Secondly, I have extruder length + 20 cm on first calibration because it compensates on loading.

Last, my purge volume number is 156.

by

Forgot to point out that I have to run in accessory mode because my printers use Klipper. Other than the splice offset and the accessory mode options, that is what I have been using. Will try a larger splice offset and see how that goes.

by

Add a comment
User avatar

I agree; however, I think that everyone's concerns can be fixed by software and firmware. I returned mine because the return window was ending and I didn't want to be stuck with something that wasn't working. I was working with tech support (who have been really helpful with trying to figure out my issues). After returning it, I found out that the issue was with my printer. The Bowden gear had come loose and then caused the Palette to not get the correct pings which then it failed.

One other thing, I have not found a reliable solution for printing multi color. I have the Prusa MMU2S and have other problems; however, if it fails, I can usually recover and continue the print.

For me, I would buy it again if they could solve the following problems:

  1. Recovery on failed prints. Right now, if anything fails, the Palette fails the whole print.
    1. Recover from broken splices
    2. Recover from out of sync. Maybe have it suggest how much filament to cut and run that manually before continuing the print.
    3. At the start of a print, use a different color than the first one and extrude it out until the first print color appears. Similar to how the Prusa mk3s does it.
  2. Color bleeding
    1. I don't see this when I use the MMU2S. Possibly some settings; however, that shouldn't be an issue right out of the box.
  3. Slicer software other than Canvas. Prusa Slicer is really good; however, you have to do all the P2PP changes.

#

I do think this has potential and the problems can be solved with the existing hardware. I think the focus should be on fixing the firmware and either improving Canvas a lot or some other slicer software.

Was this reply helpful?

Score 2
Add a comment

Join the discussion

Author avatar Dexter Gillette will be eternally grateful.
View Statistics:

Past 24 Hours: 0

Past 7 Days: 8

Past 30 Days: 42

All Time: 914

Contact Mosaic Support Team

© 2023 Mosaic Manufacturing Ltd.