Dry Your Filament! A Look At How I Manage Filament

welcome back to Hoffman tactical in today's video I'm going to be talking about drying 3D printer filaments and printing with filaments while keeping them dry so in the past I have simply used these little dry pods on my 3D printers with desiccate inside of them to keep my filament in a relatively dry environment while it prints to keep it from absorbing moisture however this spring after I release the Orca I had to start printing Parts in nylon for the Orca kits and that resulted in me having to print with a lot of nylon you know on a 24 7 7 days a week basis and that brought up a lot of issues with my system previous to that I was able to dry the nylon prior to using it use it and then just put it back on storage and I dried again when I needed to use it and my print most of my prints were short enough where there wasn't enough time for the nylon to absorb enough a lot of moisture during the print so it wasn't a big deal however when you're printing all the time off the same roll you can't dry it like I was doing so separately and then put it back in the printer I need it to be always running the printer so that produced a big issue where the nylon would slowly accumulate moisture even inside the dry pod with desiccant and that creates lots of problems so more recently A lot of people have been doing content on keeping your filaments dry and why it's so important I've left some links down below to the 3D print General who did a great video on it more recently as well so I think that's really really good that people are talking about because it is a super important subject and wet filaments is probably the number one culprit of bad 3D prints a lot of the 3D prints I see who have a lot of bad stringing little pockets bad surface finish it's actually due to moisture in the filament so it's a huge culprit and something that you should definitely be thinking about even if you're pretty with pla plus it's not as big of an issue as with more technical materials but it can still be a problem if you live in a humid area so if you're printing with tpus if you're putting with nylons or if you're printing with anything pet based or even ABS which is a little bit less but still definitely affected by moisture you definitely need to be thinking about keeping your filaments dry now there are several different aspects to keep your filaments dry one of them is drying the filament which means taking wet filament or even filament directly from the manufacturer in its bag quite a few manufacturers the filament comes wet it doesn't actually be super crispy and dry and that's for several factors we didn't need to go into but most filament needs to actually be dried before you start printing it and this is you know more technical filaments like nylon so and then the other aspect of keeping your filaments of drying filaments is keeping them dry while you are 3D printing for short 3D prints with less moisture sensitive materials you can just keep it in the open air in enough time will not pass to the filament to absorb enough moisture to cause a problem while you're actually running your printer however if you're like me and you're running the printers on a around-the-clock basis it becomes a big big issue and that is what we're talking about in today's video is both of those aspects drying filament the different things that I do and also keeping it dry so keep in mind that this videos need more of me just sharing the issues that I've had because I'm still having some issues and things that I'm working out this is not a subject which I have put enough time into to understand it fully something I need to be working on more because it is important and especially when I'm doing production type printing on around the Around the Clock basis so definitely look at other sources of information here and take this video just as a story starting point or just my thoughts on the subject now around the time I started having more moisture issues because I was printing with more moisture sensitive materials fixed dry actually reached out to me and offered to send me a product for review now normally I don't do product reviews just because it's not what I do here on the channel they're normally not very popular videos I don't think they're that useful however I was actually needing a filament dryer I was looking at buying when I was looking at the fixed dry dryers and I said sure send it over because I was already looking at buying one so I'm also going to integrate the review of that dryer into this video and talk about that a little bit as well because I think it actually is super Equitable to the subject I have found that a certain temperature is needed to actually break the water away from the plastic molecules so when the filament absorbs water into its kind of polymer lattice it's not simply just getting wet on the outside there's not just water which you have to dry off those water molecules actually bond to some degree to the polymer molecules now this depends on the material and I don't know the exact details with each material of how this process works what I do know though is a certain amount of temperatures needed to actually break that Bond and get the water out of the filament and I've kind of figured this out by experience because if I was printing trying to dry nylons at around 60 degrees Celsius I was actually not able to get super good results even with drying for like several 12 hour periods at a time and I ended up taking my dryer and modifying it to 180 degrees Celsius and I get way better results so when you're looking at drying filaments you have to look at time it takes a certain amount of time you'd rather filament and you also need enough temperature just putting the filament in a super dry area is not enough to actually take the moisture out of it at least in my experience so a dry box or something like this that has desiccant in that keeps your filament dry can actually be enough in some cases to keep the filament dry once it's already been dried and it's on the printer however if you have wet filament just put it in a dry box like this one will not keep it dry so it actually takes heat to dry the filament at least in my experience so even if it has something like a molecular sieve to make an absolutely dry environment or a vacuum chamber it isn't really enough to uh to get that filament dry so that's why it's important to distinguish between keeping a filament dry and making a filament dry because those are two different separate things so the way I make my filament dry is I use a modified magic Mills food dehydrator and originally it ran around 150 degrees Fahrenheit it was supposed to be 160 but it's really 150 with its thermostat the actual temperature inside and that's around like 65 degrees 60 degrees Celsius and that just wasn't really enough to get my nylons dry so I ended up hardwiring the heater element to always run on in a bit of an experiment no thermostat needed and now it runs at a steady 80 degrees Celsius or like 180 degrees Fahrenheit in that ballpark and now I actually get excellent results with like eight hour drying periods with nylons and pets and any other filament that I'm printing including TPU now what I also do is I take the filament after I have run it through my dryer and it's nice and hot I then put it in a vacuum chamber for like 12 hours and or even longer if I have time and that's something actually that Vision Miner did and they recommended for their drying process and I thought I'd try it it actually kind of I think helps I get better results with shorter drying periods the filament stays hot in the filament in the vacuum chamber for some time because the vacuum is quite insulating and uh after after actively heating up it seems to break the water molecules loose from the polymer and allows them to dry out more quickly in the vacuum that's 100 not a requirement but if you have a vacuum chamber around I do find that actually helps speed the process up quite a bit after making sure the filament has been run in the dryer for some time and is fully up to temperature to loosen those water molecules loosen the actual uh chemical process is probably a little bit different than that but it's a good analogy I have found that to work quite well for drying filaments including nylons the pet carbon fiber from bamboo lab as well as TPU and TPU has been the most difficult filament to keep dry to get consistent results it's one of those filaments where when it's wet you will absolutely know it and it will not print uh parts that are of any quality so those three filaments are the ones that I've done the most experiments with more recently and I've gotten excellent results using my modified dryer now a big issue you'll run into is most filament dryers and most food dehydrators all top out around 160 degrees Fahrenheit or around 60 65 degrees Celsius which is unfortunate because in my experience that is simply not hot enough to get good results when trying to dry nylons and other moisture sensitive filaments so getting a food dehydro and modifying through one of the higher temperatures a legitimate option there are also little toaster ovens and electric devices you can get that do that and I would like to see a trend in filament dryer manufacturers increasing their maximum temperatures to be warmer and we'll talk about in just a minute when I talk about the review of the fixed dry filament dryer now let's talk about keeping your filament dry now there's two different times you want to do this one of them is during storage and the other one is when you're actually printing the filament and the latter one is pretty important as well as the former so when storing filaments what I've always done is I have desiccant containers old desk and containers they're just five gallon steel uh tins basically like little mini 55 gallon drums and they are completely sealed they're steel and very airtight and I just have a lot of desk in those I use dry right for that particular application even though there are I think better options I still do not have the best results with filament in those containers so I always have to do some at least some drying after taking the filament out of the dry box that particular method would probably work better if I use something like a molecular sieve to keep that air super super dry I have not experimented with that yet I know that some people have um and I think that it is actually worth investigating further to make sure that you remove basically all the moisture in the air another great option I think would be keeping them in a vacuum however containers to store lots of filament in a vacuum can get expensive so that's another option storing filaments is just simply not that easy keeping it absolutely dry now storing filaments while actually printing them can be more challenging because you have to have the filament coming out of your dryer container into the 3D printer a vacuum is kind of ruled out because of that and what I have done for the longest time is I have these old cupcake carriers basically they're a transparent pod which is pretty airtight and I have it attached on a nice bracket above my 3D printer I did this a couple years ago when I put the shop in because it helped a little longer than that now but it was a while ago and I've been using them for several years because it helps keep the filament dry after I put deskin in it and it keeps the humidity level probably around 15 to 20 percent which is actually pretty good for printing with like plas and polycarbonates and even short prints with nylon because it's a low enough humidity level that the filament doesn't absorb the humidity particularly quickly however with tpus and nylons after couple days you will begin having issues because that humidity level is simply too high so that is where the fixed dry dryer comes in and I've also been experimenting with some uh thinking about doing some other types of active heating to keep the filament dry but the basic concept here is active heating so rather than just using uh desiccant inside the container you're actually heating the air just like you do in a dryer and the basic concept behind a dryer if you if you don't know is you're taking in air that is of a certain relative humidity so you have a particular dew point like you've had a dew point of like 70 degrees Fahrenheit you're taking that air and then you're heating it up and the dew point doesn't change the amount of actual water in the air also doesn't change but what does change is the capacity of the air to hold moisture the hotter it gets the more water that air can hold so the absolute amount of water in the air doesn't change but you're heating it up and the relative humidity is going down as the capacity of the air to hold water goes up so the water begins to absorb the air begins to absorb water out of the filament and take it into uh into a vapor state in the air so that's kind of how filament that's how drying works there are a number of filament dryer options now on the market fixed dry is one of them and they kind of follow a similar design as a lot of the other more recent filament dryer designs and basically it is a container that holds your filament it has vent holes on the top it then has a small heater element in the bottom of the fan that takes air Heats it up and blows it into the filament chamber where your filament is being held now in the case of the fixed dry it does mechanically have a pretty nice setup it holds up to a three kilogram roll inside or two two kilogram rolls which I kind of like because the dryers that limits you to one kilogram are pretty limiting because I do use the big rolls a lot the most important aspect of the dryer is how hot does it get and what what is the ventilation inside like because if the dryer is completely closed off to the outside the internal humidity as it dries the filament will simply go up and you won't get a very effective dry because the water actually can't go anywhere you want to be bringing in new Air heating it up to a low relative humidity and then expelling any of the moisture out into the environment again in the case of the thick stride they do a pretty good job of this they have a vent on top and the fan and heater element on the bottom so it circulates the air around the filament quite well so I have had no issues with condensation internally or any other problems with a lack of venting with moisture now temperature is where I begin to get a gripe with the fixed dry that is because they say it goes up to 70 degrees Celsius which is actually pretty good that's a lot higher than they used to be in back in the beginning when more companies were starting to make filament dryers but it's still not as hot as I would like it however when I actually measure the internal temperature it was around 150 degrees Fahrenheit which works out to like 65 degrees Celsius so it's not quite as high as they say it gets at least when I measured it with my thermometer and my experience drying the drying filaments and it has been consistent with that starting off with wet nylons or wet pet carbon fiber in the in the dryer for several days I have unfortunately still had issues with moisture just to give you guys some relative numbers here with this filament dryer assuming you have a relative humidity at like 85 degrees Fahrenheit of about 75 percent which is a quite humid environment and something I experienced around here quite a bit um under those conditions your dew point is probably going to be around 75 76 degrees Fahrenheit running this drier you're going to have like 150 degrees Fahrenheit internally or like 65 degrees Celsius that would result of a relative humidity inside the filament dryer of about 10 percent and that has been enough to keep the filament dry when I've been using it however it's still pretty marginal so if that temperature was bumped up to 180 degrees Fahrenheit you know around 80 degrees Celsius that number would would jump almost in half down to like five or six percent relative humidity which is actually quite good and if you get it just a little bit hotter um your relative humidity really starts dropping off so that's why I think pushing those temperatures up a little bit makes a huge difference in the effectiveness of the dryer I'm also making sure you have dry air getting sucked into the dryer using air conditioning to do that which something I've also done a little bit also helps keep the humidity level inside significantly lower now what I've been using the dryer for and it works excellent for this is I take already dried filaments and I put it in the dryer and I've now had a particular roll of pet carbon fiber which is a moisture sensitive filament that has lots of issues after only a couple days out in humidity it's different than nylon I'm not quite as sensitive but it's still the results are just as bad with a little bit more time I have now had it in the dryer for uh several weeks and I've had no issues at all it's been printing on my bamboo lab p1p I'm actually printing front plates and for my kits and I've been getting excellent results with no stringing no signs of moisture at all so it's been doing a great job keeping the relative humidity low enough where I don't have an issue with the filament absorbing new moisture however it's not quite as hot as I would like it to be I have been back and forth with fixed right a little bit about this and it's something they might work on and it's something that if I were them I would focus very heavily on getting my temperature actually up to 80 degrees Celsius or you know 180 degrees Fahrenheit because that is the temperature you need to effectively dry and that would make it one of the best filament dryers in the market I think so that is kind of my big gripe with it now we'll jump into some more mechanical aspects how it works and some different things that I would like to see done with it mechanically the filament dryer attached directs the filament to the printer using a PTFE tube which goes into a little rubber grommet these rubber grommets unfortunately don't grip onto the PTF e-tube well enough and the PTFE tube can slip into the filament dryer and get entangled in the spool resulting in the filament becoming Tangled and a failed print so I just use a little a boating tube adapter on the fixed ride add some additional retention which fix this problem but I would like to see proper boating tube adapters installed on the dryer to begin with to help alleviate this issue my one other gripe with the fixed dry filament dryer is that the user interface is just some push buttons that you kind of go through a couple different settings you can increase the time and the temperature obviously I want to run it at the maximum temperature really in my opinion even with pla plus because I had never had an issue drawing pla plus even up to 80 degrees Celsius because the filament can soften a tiny bit at this point but as long as it's still on its spool I've never had a problem with Distortion so I always like to run at the maximum temperature and I do that with the dryer but every time the dryer Powers down you have to go back through the settings and increase the temperature and the time back up to the values you want them at and speaking of time the dryer default for like four hours however if you turn the time up to 48 Hours it'll run on unlimited uh forever basically until power down which is what I want in a dryer I don't really want to power it off because I am running the dryer on a standby mode next to the printer which is where I think these dryers really shine so I would like to see an interface that defaults to the maximums rather than the minimums when you first power it on now really just a convenience thing but it's uh something that'll make the user interface quite a bit better the things I really like about this dryer are actually that it holds the up to the three kilogram rolls of filament on its little internal rollers and that works quite well I've had no issues with filament feeding other than the problem with the Boating tube getting pulled inside I like the the fact that it goes up to almost 70 degrees Celsius that's a lot warmer than the ones that used to run around 50 degrees Celsius and the fact that it has a fan that properly circulates air through the dryer and expels the moisture are all really good things so this dryer has actually worked really well as a standby dryer next to my printer and I would actually recommend it for that purpose I've seen them below a hundred dollars when on sale which is still kind of expensive for what it is but in the other hand it's not that much money for how important it is to keep your filament dry however if you want to actually dry filaments you're going to need something at a higher temperature at least in my experience so I would look into potentially modding one of these dryers which I need to look into a little bit more because the duty cycle on the heater is not anywhere near 100 so they could run it hotter with just some software changes so if anyone from fixture is watching I would definitely recommend increasing your temperature limits in software to let it get up to 80 degrees Celsius or even hotter but 80 degrees Celsius absolutely for sure and that would make it a very practical machine as it is it makes a great standby dryer I might get another one of my try some other brands but it's something which I'm going to need on all of my printers to provide that active heating to keep the filament dry so in summary moisture is a huge problem especially if you live in a humid area with more moisture sensitive 3D printing filaments like pet based filaments nylon based filaments as well as tpus and really any other filament to a lesser extent so if you are having issues with print quality and stringing it's probably moisture so I would definitely recommend getting a dryer as well potentially as dry boxes and areas to store it I have been using dry boxes for a long time and they work to some degree they help Mighty get the problem but it's not enough to keep filament dry long term some sort of active heating or potentially using a molecular sieve or some other more advanced desiccant method could work as well but active heating is definitely a really good option I've had excellent results out of it in the last few weeks while trying it out in a very humid environment and uh I would highly recommend looking into that when you're storing filaments keeping them as dry as possible once again if you have a vacuum something sort of vacuum stores available I think that would be awesome but just storing them in a completely sealed container with desiccant does work to some extent but you'll probably need to do remedial drying but in any case I would highly recommend uh researching filament drying options getting yourself some sort of filament dryer the fixed dry does work quite well as a standby filament dryer next to your printer and I am definitely going to be using it for that so it's an important subject don't overlook it dry filament is good wet filament will make your day bad when you're getting poor quality prints so keep all that in mind guys hope you enjoyed today's brief video and I will catch you in then next time

Channel: Hoffman Tactical

Views: 14,443

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Id: si8cmjF3a8g

Length: 19min 29sec (1169 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 18 2023