Drying filament - ghetto dryer.

[Janger]

I love solutions to problems which involve a cardboard box - i.e cheap as hell. You may have seen my spray booth. In this vid - link below - a maker, Ricky Impey, has fabbed a filament dryer. Reuse the box the filament came in, cut off the bottom, poke 9 holes in the top, and then you put the filament under the new box 'lid' and turn on the heat bed on your printer 70C. Wait. Monitor. Love it. The little electronic humidity gauges are cheap on ebay or amazon. Ricky you rock.

 

[slow-poke]

I need to make one of those for my oddball rolls of filament, thanks for posting.

Any idea on a suitable humidity value?

 

[Janger]

Ideally .... zero!? I'm not sure how you get there exactly. Vacuum chamber? Freeze drying? Practically speaking I put a roll of nylon in my electric dryer with one of those humidity meters (as seen on the cardboard box). I ran it for 8 hours and the humidity went down to 15 or 20 from 35 or 40%. That seemed to work. I bought a five pack on amazon for various uses. In the fridge, in the shop, etc. @David_R8 see I snuck cardbox box in there along with a photo? omg I better stop before someone thumps me.

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[DavidR8]

I wonder if one could use one of those coffee mug warming plate things in a cardboard box instead of having to tie up the printer for hours.

 

[Janger]

I wonder if one could use one of those coffee mug warming plate things in a cardboard box instead of having to tie up the printer for hours.

Try it and post results. !

 

[Janger]

Ideally .... zero!? I'm not sure how you get there exactly.

I thought of a painful approach. Put desiccant beads in a sealed plastic box (not a cardboard box). The beads will reduce the total humidity in the box to a new average. Take out the beads, put in fresh ones, and repeat as many times as you can stand it. With enough beads I think you could reduce the humidity by half each time. diminishing returns for sure. 40, 20, 10, 5, 2.5, 1.25, 0.625, 0.3, ....like this dryer box

 

[DavidR8]

Try it and post results. !

Or a small slow cooker.

 

[jcdammeyer]

I wonder if one could use one of those coffee mug warming plate things in a cardboard box instead of having to tie up the printer for hours.

I think I just found a use for my POS Delta Printer although I already have a dual spool dryer.

 

[Proxule]

Interesting!
I use a thrift store dehydrator.

Thanks for sharing