MMU Vs Pallete 2

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Device comparison from @Taxilian/Prusa3d Discord.

MMU Vs Palette

MMU

Pros

  • When it works it's "hands off" -- no need to be present to start a print * Extremely useful for starting prints remotely where you can pick one of the five loaded filaments that you want to print with (I use this feature more than anything else)
  • Impressive error correction: Filament run-out detection and when it has an issue mid-print you can often fix it and continue the print (note that depending on a lot of factors sometimes that leaves artifacts in the print, however)
  • Software is all very integrated, no annoying web software or need to import into a preprocessing step to get where you want to go (but you have to use slic3r PE, which to me is actually a good thing since it's a really nice slicer)
  • Open source; you can mod both software and hardware to improve problems if you have the skills and people in the community have done so with the MMUv2 in a few cases. In addition you can get all the parts from other places; you can literally get the parts to build your own for $150 from aliexpress (I don't really recommend it, it's worth buying from prusa to have the support, but you can do it). This also means you can find or print replacement parts whenever you want.
  • Less expensive
  • 5 materials supported

Cons

  • It's very hardware sensitive; you must have the correct heat break (Prusa's, you can also get it from printedsolid) and even still you may have issues particularly with prints with a lot of color changes where the MMU stops due to stringing
  • Many people have it working well, but many (very vocal) people also can't get it to work practically at all. Be ready to spend some time tuning and fiddling and get advice from others
  • Only works on the Prusa mk2.5 and mk3 printers

Palette 2 Pro

Pros

  • If you calibrate it correctly and once it's started the print it will usually finish the print and work just fine. For a large multicolor print it is most likely going to be more reliable than the MMU
  • Works with pretty much any printer
  • Using Chroma you can use most slicers, if it works on your computer (it keeps crashing on two of mine, but the third it's working on so far)

Cons

  • It's a pain in the neck (comparatively) to start a print. You must be actually present to start it and each print you have to feed the filament into the printer manually (no using the autoload feature, you'll have to extrude a bit at a time until the exact correct amount has been loaded) so it usually takes me at least 5 minutes to start any given print once everything is sliced, configured, etc
  • Canvas. I'm a software engineer myself and I specialize in web systems, and I can tell you that from a software developer's perspective it's an impressive piece of software. I wish they did slicing using webassembly instead of server side, but the UI is clean, the 3d stuff looks nice... but that said, the whole idea is awful. It'll be a long time before they have everything as full featured as something like slic3r, I don't like the purge tower nearly as much, and so far the last 4 times I've tried to use it it's failed because either a) the settings I needed (such as extrusion width on the first layer) weren't supported, b) I got constant 500 errors trying to slice, c) the browser tab crashed when I tried to upload a large STL file, d) some other software glitch... I just really can't say enough about how much I dislike the whole direction of Canvas. IMHO (maybe not so humble, as I think about it) they should ditch canvas and add Palette support to slic3r PE. Mosaic doesn't seem to be a fan of open source, however, even when it seems to me that it would make total sense (like Chroma, which should absolutely be open source so we could fix things ourselves when they can't).
  • Parts can only be sourced from Mosiac; I've so far ruined two splice tubes and I can only get them from Mosaic and I have no idea how much it will cost when I run out (I have two more spares besides the one that's in there now)

Summary

Overall I prefer the MMU, but that's at least partly because I mostly do single color prints or multi color prints with only a few layers with multiple colors, so not a lot of changes. I find that the printer with the palette on it sits silent most of the time because I'm too lazy to take the p2p off of the printer so I can print single color stuff easily (I start most of my prints remotely). The two mk3 printers that have the MMUv2 on it I use all the time because I can be at work and say "hey, I need to print this. In PETG. Black. That's in bay 4, so go!" and it will 95% of the time work. I ask my wife to clear the bed and I start another print... this time in blue PLA. That said, I use the palette when I have a serious multicolor print that I want to succeed. YMMV and it depends on your use case