PALETTE+

PALETTE+ MULTI-COLOR & MATERIAL PRINTING

Mosaic

Regular price $839.00 $839.00 Sale


PALETTE+ (1.75MM) 

PALETTE+ $799 + Fixed Shipping $40(USA) = $839

 

MULTI-MATERIAL PRINTING WITH YOUR 3D PRINTER: INTRODUCING PALETTE+

 

Due to high volume of orders, Palette+ will be shipped out within 3-4 business days after payment. 

 

 

 Palette+ is the new and improved Palette. Palette+ lets you build an unprecedented range of creations on the 3D printer you already own. Palette+ enables multi-color, multi-material printing. It works with PLA, PETG, select water-soluble materials, and select TPU (flexible) materials. The ability to print in up to four colors and materials with different properties allows your printer to move beyond creating single-color and single-property objects.

 

 

EXPLORE MULTI-MATERIAL PRINTING

  • Turbo-charge your printer with Palette+.
  • Palette+ combines 4 filaments and feeds them into your printer in real time.
  • No modifications required.

SOLUBLE. DURABLE. FLEXIBLE. COLORFUL.

  • Print impossible overhangs with water-soluble support.
  • Make heat- and water-resistant models in 4 colors of durable PETG.
  • Create functional, end-use products by combining PLA with a flexible TPU.

REDISCOVER YOUR PRINTER

  • Palette+ works with most filament-based printers. Find out if your printer is compatible with Palette+ here.
  • Join the global community of Palette owners in 30+ countries.

NEW FEATURES WITH PALETTE+

MULTI-MATERIAL PRINTING 

One of Palette+’s biggest enhancements is its compatibility with more material combinations, including: PLA with a water-soluble, PLA with flexible TPU, and PETG with PETG.

We're working to bring functionality that was once exclusively available on industrial machines to the desktop market, and to allow filament-based printers to create a wider variety of objects.

ENGINEERING AND FOOD GRADE: PETG

Palette+ enables the creation of tough, temperature resistant, recyclable, and food safe prints with PETG. MatterHackers.com describes PETG filament as “durable and easy to print” and “likely to take over as the most commonly-used filament.”

One of the first Palette owners played with their Palette’s settings to try to use PETG. While some of these prints completed successfully (like the Dragon print below that was featured on twitter.com/PalettePrinted), these prints came at a cost: they required lower printing speeds so Palette could could keep up—splicing PETG required longer heating times.

 

An early Palette owner’s experiment with PETG. We tested PETG more thoroughly so it would be reliable and easy-to-use with Palette+. (Original Dragon Model by MakerBot.)

 

An impressive group of PETG prints completed by an early Palette owner. (Low-Poly Pokémon Models by Flowalistik.)

 

Palette+ removes this barrier. Palette+’s new splicing technology creates excellent PETG splices and is just as fast with PETG as it is with PLA. PETG is now supported for Palette+, and is rated for use on prints with up to 700 splices.

 

Resilient and easy to print: a multi-color headphone band made of PETG with Palette+.

 

WATER-SOLUBLE: SCAFFOLD

One of the most frequent requests we received from Palette owners was compatibility with soluble materials. Today, we’re happy to announce that Palette+ works with select water-soluble support materials. We searched for a high-quality, widely available water-soluble filament, and we found it in Scaffold from E3D’s spoolWorks. Scaffold is the first water-soluble material that is compatible with Palette.

Palette+ can enable prints with up to 3 PLA-based filaments with Scaffold as the 4th. With Palette+, single-extruder printers can create multi-color and multi-material prints with highly complex geometries.

These were printed with PLA and Scaffold on single-extruder printers:

 

Intertwined Möbius strips (PLA-PLA-Scaffold). Printed on a Series 1 Pro from Type A Machines. (Awesome model by cadboy — Thing:54030.)

 

 

Low-poly whale (PLA-Scaffold). (Sleek model by simulacrumstudios — Thing:156081.)

 

Multi-color ball bearing (PLA-PLA-PLA-Scaffold). The balls are suspended by Scaffold, a water-soluble filament by E3D.

 

Palette+ and Scaffold are supported for prints with up to 500 splices.

We’ll continue to test other support materials (and we’ll prioritize testing those with the most requests). Send us a request at filament@mosaicmanufacturing.com, (or send us a few meters of your filament) if you’d like us to test Palette+ with your favorite water-soluble filament!

FLEXIBLE: TPU MATERIAL (SHORE HARDNESS 91A AND HARDER)

Many Palette users have requested Palette support for flexible filaments. We’re happy to share that Palette+ is compatible with select TPU-based flexible materials when spliced with PLA. Flexible materials are useful to create end-use products and more realistic prototypes, and for a plethora of other cool uses. TPU can be used to simulate cartilage in a spinal cord, or to create pressable buttons on headphones. Using TPU with PLA can add new dimensions to your prints.

Flexible materials can be tricky to print with. This material group is rated for prints with up to 50 splices. We have good splicing algorithms and settings for a flexible polyurethane TPU with a Shore hardness of 91A. We’re working to optimize settings for a wider range of TPU filaments, and to improve consistency and reliability further .

 

Multi-segment filament (PLA-TPU) made with Palette+.

 

 
iPhone case with flexible hinge (PLA-PLA-TPU) printed with Palette+ on a single-extruder printer.
 

We’ll release a materials guide closer to Palette+’s ship date (July 31, 2017) to provide more information on what filament brands/materials we recommend for use with Palette (as well as recommended Palette and print settings).

Material not listed? Contact filament@mosaicmanufacturing.com if you have any questions or requests to test materials. If you print with a particular filament and want us to test its compatibility with Palette+, contact us, send us a few meters, and we’ll happily test it for you.

ENHANCED TRANSITIONS: MINIMIZING WASTE & PRINT TIME

To ensure the right filament is crisp and primed in your extruder at the right time, Chroma inserts ‘transition towers’ into Palette+ prints.

 
A three-color transition tower next to a printed part. Some of the tower’s layers are only 5% dense. The amount of filament used during transitions can be adjusted in Chroma.
 

Chroma now offers further enhanced transition towers: towers with variable sizes (e.g., decreasing transition size as the print progresses) and further tower optimizations (to reduce waste and decrease print time). It also offers improvements to side transitions (an alternative to transition towers), and will offer other transitions options in the future.

BETTER MULTI-FILAMENT PRINT GENERATION TOOLS

MSF files power Palette+. They include information like the length, order, and material of each splice. Chroma offers more .MSF editors and generators to enable Palette+ to provide more utility (e.g., to splice the end of one spool to the beginning [or middle] of another). We’re also working to introduce a gradient generator that will simulate simple color blending over the course of a layered color change print.

MATERIAL PROFILES

Each material combination (e.g., PLA-PLA, PETG-PETG, PLA-Scaffold, PLA-TPU) has a variety of different settings that can be manipulated to increase the quality and reliability of splices. We’ll do the heavy lifting by providing profiles and splice settings for different brands and materials of filament. We plan to focus first on select soluble, TPU, and PETG materials. We expect to expand this repository of profiles over time.

 

Plot Twist: This Bulbasaur was printed on a Lulzbot Taz5 with a Palette+. More on this to come! (Low-Poly Bulbasaur model by the amazing Flowalistik.)

 

 
This architectural model was printed by a Type A Machines Series 1 Pro with Palette+.
 
 PLA-TPU iPhone case, assembled PETG-TPU-PLA-NinjaFlex headphone band
This iPhone case was printed with PLA and TPU. These headphones were printed in several parts and assembled. The outer headband has 3 colors of PETG. The teal earphones were made in PLA with white flexible TPU buttons. The earcups and soft part of the headband were printed separately with a flexible material.
  
 
One of our early splice quality/reliability torture tests. The print ran out of filament on one of its spools after 1500+ splices were successfully printed.
 
 
Two of our torture tests glued together. This print is made of over 3,000 splices. The names of backers from Palette’s Kickstarter campaign decorate the hallways in our office.
 
 
An inside look at our Toronto-based manufacturing operation, where the first batch of Palette+ machines are currently in production.