December Blog - Shipments, Spool Holders, and Palette Prints!

December Blog - Shipments, Spool Holders, and Palette Prints!

Hey everyone!

Wanted to put out a quick post on how the delivery process is going and to fill you in on what’s been happening around Mosaic.

Let’s dive right in!

Delivery Update

Our Kickstarter Backers 1 through 309 should have received a PayPal invoice for shipping charges (if you are an Ultimate Package backer please see the Ultimate Package Refunds section below, you may not have received an invoice for shipping but you should have received an email from jonny@mosaicmanufacturing.com). Once these are paid, a Palette will be on its way to you! If you are a backer in that group and have not heard from us, please send us a message and we’ll make sure an invoice is sent.

Unfortunately, November was a slow month for progress down the delivery list. We received two faulty batches each of 250 optical sensors, and also ran out of stepper motors after our supplier notified us that the lead time would be double what was previously estimated. Due to these problems we were only able to ship 25 Palettes, much lower than our goal. We just received the order of stepper motors on Tuesday and the optical sensors are on their way. We expect things to pick up and, despite the holidays, 40 Palettes to ship in December.

It does not look like we will be able to fulfill the remaining Kickstarter units by the end of the year. We will continue to work hard to get as many units out the door as possible, but we are estimating 65 Palettes will remain to be shipped in 2017. We are very sorry for this delay, we are taking all necessary steps to get Palettes to you as quickly as possible.

New QC testing area, now able to run double the number of Palettes at a time

Ultimate Package Refunds

As we mentioned in the October Blog, we are issuing refunds of $150 CAD to all Ultimate Package Backers. The reason for this is two-fold. First, filament logistics was taking valuable time away from fulfilling Palettes. Second, our best solution to filament storage ended up being far cheaper and simpler than we originally envisioned, and we felt that this was something we would be able to provide to every backer for free. We are getting in contact with those of you that this will impact, and have already issued refunds to the first half of the backers. For the remaining backers, we are reaching out to you by email to ask if you would like to apply the refund towards your Palette shipping, or the refund in full upfront. If you choose to apply the credit towards shipping, we will refund the remaining balance (in most cases shipping is less than $150 CAD). In either case these refunds will be processed through PayPal.

The filament storage solution that we designed is called “Spool Pal.” Spool Pal consists of two 3D printed brackets, your Palette box and a bar that filament can hang from. The bar we use is a 16-inch piece of aluminum, but most materials will work. Take a look:

Feedback

For those of you who have received your Palette, we’d love to hear from you! We put together a quick survey so that we can see what’s going right, and what we can improve on. Click here for the survey! 

If you have any cool pictures of prints, we’d love to see those too! Tweet them at us: @mosaicmfg, Tag us on Instagram: @mosaicmfg, Share them on our Facebook page: @mosaicmfg, or upload them to the Mosaic Slack group: sign up here

If there's anything we can do to help with your Palette experience, send us an email at support@mosaicmanufacturing.com and we’ll get right back to you!

New Palette Prints!

Fuze Hanging Planter

Fuze is a self-watering wall hanging planter. Fuze was designed in OnShape, sliced in Simplify3D, processed in Mosaic Chroma software, and printed on a Type A Machines Series 1 Pro with a Palette.

Fuze has a slightly porous barrier between the area that contains the water and the main area that houses the plant. Its geometry and structure were designed to be printed with no supports or rafts. Fuze can be printed as a solid or with a translucent window to allow its owner to quickly check the water level.

STL available here.

Cube Illusion (Rhombic Dodecahedron)

 

These 4-color geometric models were built in OnShape.

From a certain angle the models appear to be shaped like cubes.

STLs available on Thingiverse here.

Money Clip

 Designed in OnShape and printed in 4 colors on a (Type A Machines) Series 1 Pro with a Palette. The geometry was inspired by this video and so far has maintained a firm grip on 3-5 cards.

STLs available here.

You can also check out our Multi-Filament Thingiverse Group for more content Link

Software Updates

Last week we released version 1.2.1 of Chroma and Firmware. This update addresses a couple bugs and adds a couple more features. Download Chroma here, or run the updates in the app.

Chroma Updates:

  • The firmware uploader has gotten an overhaul, it will now list all of the ports that might be a Palette and lets the user choose which one to flash. If Chroma can tell which version of firmware a Palette is running, it will also display that to the user
  • Transition towers are coloured now, Chroma has been made much more colourful! 
  • The installers are now signed so antivirus programs shouldn't stop the install
  • Various small improvements Firmware

Firmware Updates:

  • There was a bug that didn't allow “Splice Demo Without Printer” to be cancelled. This bug was fixed. 
  • A special part of the splice algorithm called "dabbing" was taken out in a previous release but it has now been added back in. We noticed an increase in long strings of filament that come from splices after removing dabbing, so we added it back in to fix them.

It hasn’t been the best month for shipping – but we are getting better. Software is improving, firmware is improving, and despite this month’s lower than anticipated numbers, we are improving our manufacturing processes. We really appreciate everyone sticking with us as we go through this process, we’re very excited to get your Palette delivered.

If you have a Palette, we would love to get in touch to learn how your experience has been – if you could take a few moments to fill out this survey, it will help us improve Palette’s experience for all future users.

As always, if you have any questions we’d love to hear from you!

- Mosaic.