Palette 3 (Pro) Print Quality

This article tackles some of the most common causes of print quality issues when printing with Palette 3 (Pro). For further assistance with a particular print, get in touch with us at support@mosaicmfg.com and share a link to your Canvas project!

Poor calibration can be caused by several different issues, so it's important to be methodical when tackling it. Here are the most common solutions for poor calibration when printing with Palette 3 (Pro):

• Make sure you’ve calibrated your extruder before printing with Palette, following a guide such as this one. If you need to calibrate your extruder after you've set up with Palette, we'd recommend doing a factory reset of Palette, so you can start again with fresh calibration (Settings>System).
• Check your splice tuning for all materials used, and ensure that your splice settings are applied in material profiles in Canvas. Splice tuning is vital for ensuring successful, high-quality Palette prints.
• Check your Loading Offset (distance from end of Palette’s outgoing tube to nozzle). Edit if needed on Palette, under Printers > Your printer > Edit calibration data.
• Project settings: keep print speeds low (60-70mm/s is a typical top speed for Palette printing, and lower speeds will often be beneficial), and check print temperatures for all materials used.
• Transitions - increase transition lengths to tackle color bleeding, use variable transitions when appropriate.
• Examine your pings data, checking for under/over-extrusion and inconsistent pings. Pings should be improved by taking the above steps.
• Contact Mosaic Support at support@mosaicmfg.com for further help.

• Make sure to use only 1.75mm filament with a tolerance (dimensional accuracy) of +/-0.03mm or better.
• Keep filament dry, or follow a guide as this this one to dry your filament. FIlament that has absorbed moisture can print and splice inconsistently.
• Create material profiles and do splice tuning for all material combinations.

• Use style overrides to material profiles when necessary, to apply different print settings to materials within a project. For example, different brands of PLA will often require sightly different print temperatures for optimal print quality.
• Follow this guide for full instructions.

• Use the Z offset setting in project settings, in the First Layer tab, to offset all Z values in the print. Adjusting this setting can help with first layer adhesion, or if your printer's bed is not positioned at a Z height of 0.
• Reduce First layer speed to help first layer adhesion.
• Use a brim to help stop the model from warping or peeling.
• A raft is a flat structure under the model(s) to aid adhesion. The raft is detached after printing.
• Adjust First layer height in the Layer Height tab. A taller first layer height can lead to better adhesion.

• KISSlicer and Slic3r have different surface finish options. In KISSlicer, you can use the Avoid backtracking on solid layers option, while Slic3r has an Ironing feature and other surface finish settings.
• See a full explanation in this article.

• Color bleed can be tackled in several ways, mainly by adjusting transition lengths and the transition target.
• Cleaning your nozzle and performing extruder calibration are also important steps.
• See a full explanation in this article.

Retraction settings are often important to tackling issues with filament stringing or blobbing, and some experimentation may be needed to find the perfect settings. Retraction settings are found in the Extrusion tab of your Canvas project settings.

• Increasing Retraction distance can help to limit stringing. Bowden-style extruders often require larger retraction distances.
• Retraction speed should be at a sweet spot - too slow will create oozing, too fast can create grinding.
• Setting a Wipe distance of 1-2mm can often help limit stringing and blobbing.
• Setting a distance for Never retract when travelling less than can help to eliminate zits/blobs on the print surface.
• Print temperatures that are too high will also create oozing.
• Increasing the movement speed (X/Y travel speed in the General tab) can combat stringing and oozing.
• Coast distance in the Perimeters tab allows you to enable coasting. This stops extrusion near the end of each extrusion line, helping to reduce stringing or blobbing.

• Supports can be difficult to remove and leave marks or blobs on the print surface.
• Using soluble supports will give a cleaner finish to prints that have a lot of supports. It's important to do splice tuning and add the splice settings to your material profiles.
• See steps 3-6 of this guide for full instructions.