Mosaic Manufacturing

[BenTheRighteous]

I did a search for 'mosaic' on these forums and I'm a bit surprised no one's mentioned Mosaic Manufacturing here before?

In a nutshell, they're developing a machine that enables multi-color printing on your single-extrusion machine. You can use up to 4 filaments in a print with just one print head, and it does that by sitting in the path between your filament spool and your extruder motor and splicing the appropriate filament in on-demand.

Of course multi-material is way cooler than multi-color (at least in my book) and I think they've had some degree of success there too, but I think that's more of a "bonus" than a feature. I've heard they had some success with PLA and dissolvable support - I haven't heard anything about ABS. They do have a nifty youtube video demonstrating a flashlight they printed from PLA and conductive filament.

On one hand, I think this is a really cool freaking concept! I haven't personally messed with multiextrusion myself but I've heard it's a pain. You have to worry about leveling both nozzles, and during a print you have to worry about the idle one dribbling. And of course there's extra hardware - more steppers for more extruders, more wires to run, additional stepper drivers - RAMBo can't support more than 2 extruders? I'm fuzzy on details, but with the way the mosaic machine is set up, it bypasses ALL these problems. Seems like it's almost as badass as sharks with frickin lazors!

On the other hand the machine is not free (obviously...). I just got an email from them today saying they're about to enter their kickstarter phase and I'm wondering, yes multiextrusion is cool, but how much is it "worth?" I'm sure some people would value it highly but I'm worried it would wind up being mostly a curiosity, and I'd just fall back into the habit of single-color printing.

At this point I'm just curious what other people think. Coolest thing since sliced bread? Overhyped toy?

Convince me that it's worth it at any price, please... I want one and I don't want to feel like I'm making a mistake in getting one!
(For real though, honesty above all else please.)

[emsoll]

I've also seen this device and was very curious about interfacing it to my Rostock Max V2. Based on the little information they have on their site it should be compatible but I hate to be the first guy to actually try to get it working (unless they'll give me a free unit to try out). I saw they are now quoting $475 USD for a four color unit. They are saying there will be a KickStarter campaign and I'm hoping the earlier adopters may be a bit of a price break.

I am curious how the whole operation works since it is not directly interfaced into your printer. All I can figure is that you that you load the same g-code that you plan to print and it splices in the right color at the right point, You then feed the multi-colored output into your into the printer for the print. Well in theory that sounds possible. I'd like to see more details on the web site.

Anyone else hot to get one of these units?

[BenTheRighteous]

I think the $475 IS the price break for the early backers. Not sure but the kickstarter is tomorrow and I haven't heard anything different.

I'd like to ask people who have experience with multi extrusion, whether they think a machine like this is worth the price.

I'm going to do an arbitrary comparison between what I think it's like to maintain a Kraken machine vs. what Mosaic does, since they both enable 4 filaments for a single print:

Mosaic Pros:
- No leveling multiple print heads
- No dribble from idle print heads
- No extra extruders / stepper motors / stepper drivers
- No extra cooling necessary

Kraken Pros:
- No restriction on multimaterial
- Different nozzle size per material
- Different temperature per material

Bottom line is that I feel like the Mosaic is a more "plug and play" solution but I don't know if it's worth more than twice the price of a kraken ($200 from filastruder), even considering that you have to upgrade the RAMBo to something like an Azteeg or whatever it is.

What do others think? Yay or nay?

[Polygonhell]

It looks like they are splicing pieces of filament into the bowden tube, it's not a horrible idea, but a lot will depend on the implementation. I've done this by hand, the issue is occasionally one of the filament parts will jam at the entrance to the hotend, I wonder if they are actually bonding the pieces together, or just letting the pieces push each other.

I have a kraken, it's a good hotend, mine is sitting in a draw currently I played with multi material/multi color and decided it wasn't worth the pain of dual hotends, and eventually pulled it because it was total overkill for single material printing.

[KAS]

Curious why they painted over the eyes on the printer

[KAS]

I got in at $490, anyone else try?

[BenTheRighteous]

haha, I didn't realize it was going to be SO crazy popular that the early birds were going to sell out in the first minute! I definitely missed it.

Looks like the only available option now is the full price of $692 USD. At that price I'll pass, but congratulations KAS for snagging one of the deals!

If it were me, I'd probably go nuts waiting for the machine to arrive...

[KAS]

I never backed anything from kickstarter because of the horror stories you hear, We'll see how this one goes I guess.


$45k of $61k goal in 40 minutes. They might hit the goal in one day, although it's slowing down at full price.

[BenTheRighteous]

KAS, I don't want to rain on your parade, and I swear I'm not just bitter for not getting an early bird deal - I'm just chewing on this stuff in my head and I'd feel bad if this wound up failing and I'd never shared my thoughts.

Awhile back there was an interesting article linked elsewhere in these forums: http://www.inside3dp.com/low-cost-3d-pr ... g-suicide/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
And also there are some insightful comments in the reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comm ... _extruder/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

My thought is that they're not aiming high enough for their campaign. This is a complex machine that might as well be a printer, right? I mean it's got moving parts, electronics, etc. And there are plenty of printers that fail on kickstarter because they ran out of money.

I don't know where/if these guys get money from other than kickstarter - either they don't say or I missed it - but assuming that the kickstarter funds are their sole source, then I really don't think they'll have enough.

Their timeline shows that right after the kickstarter, they're going to hire more people. They say "new hires" which is plural, so I'll assume at least two, and I would imagine that additional salary until January is going to be a significant chunk of the 60k they're looking for. What if it was 3 people, or more?

Then they have to buy parts for the machines. And the timeline also includes "build out assembly facility" so I imagine that means they're going to have to buy additional equipment - I don't know what that includes - and do they have a place to keep all these things? Do they have to pay rent? That's more cost.

In my head there's just too many question marks. I don't even know what the expenses might be but I have a hard time believing that you're going to be able to fit 8 months' worth of expenses into 60k, and even if you did that probably leaves no room for error.

I want the project to succeed because I think the machine is cool as hell, and they have a working prototype, and they must've paid the bills so far to even get to this point. So maybe there's more going on that I don't know about. But I think there's just a lot of potential for this to fail too.

[mhackney]

$75K goal, first delivery in Jan. 2016, 5 people on their staff. Now some simple math:

9 months of expenses, salaries, etc to cover

$75K/9 months = $8300/month

If they used ALL of this to pay themselves, that's $1660/month salary.

With 5 mouths to feed, materials to purchase, manufacturing, etc. the financials just don't make sense. Even if they didn't pay themselves - which is not intelligent given the length of time - they are significantly undercapitalized for such a complex product. They should add "Undercapitalized" as the #1 risk.

Just MHO.

Michael

[JFettig]

$75K goal, first delivery in Jan. 2016, 5 people on their staff. Now some simple math:

9 months of expenses, salaries, etc to cover

$75K/9 months = $8300/month

If they used ALL of this to pay themselves, that's $1660/month salary.

With 5 mouths to feed, materials to purchase, manufacturing, etc. the financials just don't make sense. Even if they didn't pay themselves - which is not intelligent given the length of time - they are significantly undercapitalized for such a complex product. They should add "Undercapitalized" as the #1 risk.

Just MHO.

Michael

Assuming they work on this 40 hours a week, 52 weeks in a year.

[KAS]

I'll try to stay positive and hopeful that they at least get the super early birds shipped. If it fails, I'll be a sad panda.

After reading a bit more, they mentioned everything is off the shelf components. I'll assume they mean in regards to the arduino based controller and whatever motors/steppers/power supply it has. The software/firmware is open source, although they don't really have a choice when using arduino. I'd say the software is mostly complete and probably the key to the puzzle. No idea how they cut or splice the filament.



Just some random info.

-Mitch Debora is also the founder of http://www.vivid3d.ca/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

-Heather Evans: linkedIn profile mentions, The team now has office space in Kingston and I am working on a part time basis, while completing my degree at Queen's full time.

-Chris Labelle: My team, Mosaic Manufacturing, won the 2014 QSII pitch competition. We were chosen over eight other teams to receive a $40,000 prize which is being used as seed funding for our business

[Polygonhell]

The typical mistakes for manufacturing kickstarters, are

Not understanding that when a vendor gives you a lead time it isn't a guarantee
That QC is your problem unless you make it your suppliers and that's a job in itself
Margins are usually way to "marginal" to absorb delays, and cost changes

I personally won't support kick starters for manufactured product from people with no manufacturing experience.

The problem with kickstarter is it doesn't encourage you to ask for what you need rather you ask for what you think you can raise and hope for a lot more. Then you have the issues with having planned on building 200 of something you now have 10K orders for.

Having said that some do succeed.

[KAS]

Interesting updates from the kick starter.

How would you convert a landscape to STL?

[BenTheRighteous]

https://www.matterhackers.com/news/how- ... -the-world" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[KAS]

Well that was easier than I thought. I'm guessing the colors were placed manually.

[626Pilot]

I got in on the Kickstarter. Will be interesting to see what I can do with it, hopefully next January.

They post updates. It looks like they're getting more stuff nailed down over time. They moved away from using lexan for their internal support, and are now using sheet metal instead. They also upgraded two of their stepper motors to bigger models (same as they use elsewhere in the machine) so that the machine wouldn't have issues cutting some of the newer filaments. The control board looks totally off-the-shelf. They're currently finishing the design of the "scroll wheel," an encoder they have you install right at the print head. That lets them sense the filament position as it actually arrives at the printer, allowing them to account for hysteresis through the Bowden tube. It plugs into a little four-pin DIN jack on the side of the Palette.

Their last communication mentioned that a lot of Kickstarter projects wind up getting screwed because they go with the wrong fulfillment company. They're going to test their company's ability to deliver by shipping out some 3D printing toolkits to some/all(?) backers, and they want people to let them know when they actually get the kits. This tells me they're looking to solve potential issues like this before they happen - in other words, they aren't just flying by the seat of their pants, and letting the real world crash over them like a tidal wave. They're planning and actively looking to solve problems ahead of time, which suggests that someone over there is capable of strategic thinking. A good sign, in my opinion.

Whether they will make their deadline remains to be seen.

[KAS]

So far I've been impressed, although that could be biased because I'm involved in this kickstarter.

I found it interesting that they are using 7 steppers to handle the splicing/feeding. Did you get a glimpse of that controller, looks familiar but I cant place it.?

[img]https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/004/43 ... f236da7365[/img]

[Nylocke]

Just a RAMPS with an external board for another few stepper drivers?