Check this out. I saw a video a few days ago about using your heated bed and a filament box to dry filament. So I had to try refreshing my filament storage box desiccant. I would say it works, I have the bed set to 83C, look at the moisture soaking the cardboard after one hour.
The meter is sitting right on one of the holes, 99%RH…maybe I should not have stuffed the box so full.
This sitting in the box was at 35% RH at room temp, can’t believe how much moisture this stuff actually holds!
I have used my dehydrator turned filament dryer to recondition some decadent before and it’s crazy just how much that stuff holds! I had to stir it around every hour or so until it was completely dry. The stuff I’m using changes color so it makes it real easy to see
I posted a pic of the moisture in my sunlu dryer the other day, never would i ever had thought they would work that well or that pla would suck up that much water!!!
I think I am going to grab a filament dryer, if I actually start using PETG-CF I might need it. Worst case I use it to recharge the desiccant and revitalize stringing filament.
I kind of have an endless supply of desiccant packs but by the time I get them I have no idea how dry they actually are.
I go through a roll in no more than two days so I think I am actually pretty safe for PLA and PETG, but…I have never dried a spool so maybe the prints could get better.
I open brand new spools that are wet lol. I’ve gotten to the point that as soon as I open a spool it goes in the dryer for a few hours then directly into a drybox with decadent and printed from there. But I live in the land of all the humidity. Room is almost always at 50% or higher lol
I’ve always presumed that new rolls packed with dessicant would be dry but I saw someone point out in a video that often the filament is still specifically wet from the manufacturing process. That reminded me that I’d seen a local filament manufacturer where the extruded filament was being cooled in a water bath and that made it click somewhat.
I’ve opened a brand new roll and put it straight in a drybox with a humidity sensor and had it over 30% humidity. And one next to it that I dried and had been in the drybox for over a month was around 20%
Whole new world for me…PLA is so simple.
I have seen the water chillers, I figured they get dried after but I do remember watching them get put directly into bags, maybe that is why the desiccant is there…to dry them, not to keep them dry. There has to be a lot of moisture trapped in the wraps.
Yeah, I’m not sure how much water the filament would absorb from a quick dip, probably not enough to completely saturate it so maybe the dessicant is enough to dry some less sensitive filaments. I also could imagine that it’s another area where process control has changed over time. I could imagine cheaper suppliers letting the process control slip a bit in terms of moisture content, amount of dessicant included, dimensional tolerance etc. especially as filament drying before use becomes more and more commonplace.
I would think it is more about how well it gets wiped off as it comes out of the bath. Otherwise, that just gets put in the bag with the filament and it has all the time in the world to soak in.
I picked up a filament dryer. It works well for me. I don’t print often, so if I know I’ll be printing, I try to turn it on the night before.
I did too, but I just recently opened up a HatchBox PETG roll and it was super wet right out of the bag. Constant crackling and popping.
I just picked up one of these recently:
Sovol Filament Dryer
I ran 16 hours worth of drying on it and it was still crackling some, but huge printing difference
Left: right out of pack
Middle: 6 hours drying
Right: additional 10 hours drying
This was just printing straight with default Prusaslicer PETG profiles with no changes between prints. No tuning for my printer or anything done before hand
I bought the same dryer. I learned that you need to leave the lid slightly cracked for the moisture to escape while it’s running. What I do is close the lid and leave it resting on the latches instead of latching it shut. It might help it even more.
That’s wild how much moisture those things hold!
Always drying new stuff when I’m ready to use it no matter what the material. Always assume it’s wet. My desiccant bags stay in the dryer too so they are always ready for use. I bought the PrintDry Pro and it works really well and can print directly from it. You could probably make your own for way cheaper but I wasn’t looking for a project at the time.
I know I saw one that had a little vent you could open at the top, or close it to keep it dry when done. There are so many and none really look all that different. Heater, fan, good seal for when it is done, and now it looks like I want a vent, and the highest max temp possible.
Yep, I did notice the same about 30 minutes in and did the same.
When it was running while closed the humidity was staying near 30% so I started reading more. After cracking the lid it stayed reading 10% or less. Towards the end a steady 5%
You should just move to Colorado. The winters here are very dry. 21% in my office right now.
That makes my skin itch from here.
My house is a solid 50-60% humidity inside most of the time. Currently 52%
