1st Impressions: Somewhere between "Meh" & disappointed

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.