Multi mode, go!

I wasn’t expecting the email I received this afternoon. Back in December, I per-ordered the new Mosaiq Palette 3 Pro and received notice today that it shipped! For those unfamiliar with the Palette line, it is a similar machine to the Prusa MMU2S that I use now. Both allow a 3D printer to print more than one colour of type of filament in the same print without manual intervention. The MMU2S also allows me to use things like support structures that dissolve in water or different materials that don’t bond to each other. It has always been a finicky thing. It is definitely not an ‘out of box’ solution and requires a lot of tinkering (or in most cases, community made upgrades) to be even slightly reliable. I’ve had it for a few years and go through periods where I’ll give up on it and remove it from my Prusa MK3S+ only to put it back on months later and spend hours trying to get it to work reliably again. Then there’s the Palette. The way the MMU2S works is five filaments are loaded in to the unit. When the printer requires the next colour or material the extruder unloads the current filament and the MMU2S retracts it back in to the unit. A selector moves to the next material and pushed it in to the extruder, purges the previous colour from the hot end until the new colour is extruding and then goes back to the print. Rinse, repeat. The Palette works a different way. Eight materials are loaded in and the Palette actually splices the lengths of filament together in to a continuous strand. This has both advantages and disadvantages: it cannot use materials that won’t bond with each other but it does not need to rely on an unload/reload sequence of the the MMU2S, potentially resulting in failure. When it comes to multi-colour prints the Palette reigns supreme. Combining it with the Repbox I have (which stores multiple filament spools in a dry environment for multi-material printing) and the fact that it’ll work with the Prusas or the Voron right out of the box will make for some very interesting projects!

The best part, it’ll be delivered tomorrow!