At my workplace, we use those same humidity devices to measure dampness in 3D printing pellets and wood nanocellulose materials. I like how you methodically test the filament dryers. Some channels, more interested in commissions than accuracy, just say "Buy this!". You've done a good job demonstrating how important filament drying is for ideal results when printing! Thank you for your content!
I've done a fair amount of nylon printing, PA6 & 12, regular and carbon fiber. Because it is the most difficult of all my filaments to print, I only use it on an as-needed basis, so not that often. My process involves drying it in a large benchtop food dehydrator for 12+ hours at 75C, rotating the filament a few times during this process so all sides get airflow. Then I move it into a Sunlu S2 filament dryer for printing, where I will keep drying it at 70C during the printing process. I doubt that I'm reaching anywhere near the 0.6% mark you mentioned in your video, but for 3D printing I get great results. While I store most of my filaments in vacuum bags, I don't worry much about trying to store nylon because it's so hygroscopic that it's nearly impossible to keep dry even in a vacuum bag, you always have to redry before printing, every single freaking time. While the cardboard rolls can handle higher heat, my personal belief is that the wood fibers absorb a lot of moisture, and make drying 10x harder. Cardboard is fine for cheap PLA that you don't dry, but I notice much longer PETG drying times on cardboard spools, so I typically avoid these brands. I've not seen anyone examine the impact of cardboard spools on filament drying. Commercial printers/filament makers/injection molding companies use a heated vacuum dryer to rapidly dry their pellets. By raising the temp with the pellets under a vacuum, you can dry nylon in 15 minutes. This is because under a vacuum the moisture boils off. I've tried to replicate this somewhat at home. I'll still dry the nylon for 12 hours, but then while it's still hot I quickly move it into a vacuum storage bag and pull a vacuum. But I don't think it works with storage bags, since the bags collapse under vacuum pressure, and the filament only feels a slight vacuum pressure, not enough to do anything. I've certainly not noticed any benefit. Even worse, those cardboard spools will crush in a vacuum bag, not a good mix at all. PrintDry sells a filament storage canister that has a built-in vacuum. Because the canister is a rigid body, it won't collapse under vacuum, so the filament should experience more vacuum pressure, so my idea might work better with these canisters. But the PrintDry specs list a negative pressure of -20 to -25 kPa (about 75% vacuum), while commercial dryers will reach 1 millibar, which is 0.1 kPa, an astonishing 99.9% vacuum. So my hunch is that the PrintDry vacuum might be too weak for vacuum assisted drying. But perhaps you could heat a nylon roll for 3-4 hours, then vacuum it while hot to quickly remove the remaining moisture. Could make for some interesting videos if you decide to test!!! Yes, CNC Kitchen did do a vacuum drying experiment, but he kept the vacuum rolls at room temp. It's well established that the vacuum process needs heat to be successful. It's worth mentioning that the vacuum chamber he used is much better than the PrintDry cannister. Those chambers can reach 40 microns, about 0.002 kPa, or 99.995% vacuum, exceeding even the commercial plastic dryers. They cost a little more, but might be worth it.
I’m similar, I use PLA for first prototypes and fit tests and then move up to better materials as needed, my current goto being polycarbonate. I tend to only use nylons for final versions if other materials aren’t good enough due to how much nylon costs. A good CF nylon can be many times more expensive than PLA and even a few times more expensive than PC but sometimes you need it for the strength and stiffness. I have found the Bambu PC to be a good all round filament whilst cheap. It isn’t as good as some other brands of PC but it is significantly easier to print and is relatively cheap with a good increase in properties over PLA, PETG or ABS. I tend to avoid PA6 though due to its moisture issues, the mechanical properties drop off rapidly even with just a few days, PA12 is better long term in those situations. The PA6 is the strongest and stiffest right after printing but very quickly it degrades below that of the PA12, since most of my uses are in relatively normal room environments it just makes more sense to use the PA12. I haven’t tried sealing PA6 yet though with a coating but I have heard it can work. If I really need high stiffness there are other options though, like PET-CF or just using metal rods.
@PaulStevensonPinball Thank you for sharing this. Very interesting. I share your aversion to cardboard spools. They should have just switched to refill filaments instead of cardboard for the environment. It's pointless. All ptfe tubes of my printers and the AMS of my 'Bimbo' printer hates this. Plus I have cardboard lines on my filament dryer rollers. If I use electrical tape (which rated for 90°C), the spool won't rotate well on my rollers (Polyphemus). I'd have to order some rubber tubing or respool all cardboard filaments. @conorstewart2214 PET-CF🤘 Have you tried QIDI's? It's just rebranded Kexcelled. From all the data sheets I downloaded from them, one was clearly from Kexcelled. They must've uploaded the wrong one.
I wanted to print a split keyboard (chasis) for my brother using PA12-CF..... but noticed I had quite some issues with the filament. I dried it in the X1C printer (BambuLabs) for 12hrs @90C....the print however requires Support material for the PA.... How would you go about printing with 2 such filaments simultaneously? ...as well as drying them.....simultaneously... Should I give up and print in another material?
@@peterklemenc6194 There is some PA compatible "breakaway" support material that may work for you. I think the XYPOLYER brand carries it, but I've not tried it. Personally, on my MK4 I pre-printed some bridge supports in PETG, then used a pause command on the PA print and dropped in the supports. This only works for simple geometries, though, but perhaps you could use this approach. On my 5-tool Prusa XL I have used PETG as support material for PA, and that works great, but I don't think the X1C can perform this trick.
@@peterklemenc6194 , I Have a few vacuum chambers I store my nylons in. Like you I dry tem for 8-12 hours in a dehydrator, then put them in the vacuum chamber along with a cannister of desiccant and pull a 99-99.5% vacuum using a normal two stage vacuum pump. This have worked well for me but it would have been nice to see proper tests. The equpment isn't horribly expensive btw.
Amazing! You have scientifically proven my empirical conclusions and I am glad that I did not make a mistake in choosing the path. I have been working for about a year on a dryer project for plastics such as PA6 and the like. The dryer heats the plastic up to 100C, but this is only a software limitation. And yes, nylon is printed directly from the dryer and the quality is excellent!
ive been using my Sunlu S4 and my Eibos Cyclops to dry nylon and they both do a sterling job at drying it. The trick is once dried keep it in the dry box. After printing I even retract the filament from the bowden tube back into the dry box. The Sunlu S4 auto humidity function is also super useful here.
Thank you so much for this video. We couldn't figure out how people get away with 70 degrees, because in our lab we get the moisture out of filament only at drying at 115-120°C for 5-6h. We measure the spool weight each hour and these are the settings that get rid of moisture.
You hit the nail on the head. The number of hobby printers printing with Nylon or Polycarbonate is quite low. Manufacturers of both filament and dryers probably will not be catering to those consumers anytime soon. That being said, the number of affordable machines capable of printing engineering grade filaments is growing, so there is a possibility of strides being made in the future. My experience with Nylon(both CF and non) has been good but I keep my spools in a dryer full time. I typically print parts that require both strength and temperature as well as UV resistance, so I am always printing in PC, PA, ASA and the like. It is obvious you are a good teacher as I was able to follow everything you showed in this video and I am a horrible student. Keep up the good work. This is the best channel on YT for 3D printing!
I print mostly in TPU with some CF Nylon. I use a near commercial grade food dehydrator for drying my filament. It gets to 85 decrees C. The downside is it has a maximum on-time of 24 hours before it shuts itself off. I find it interesting that it doesn't seem to dry my filament as well as my filament storage box, which uses a reptile terrarium heating pad underneath and an activated alumina desiccant cartridge at the top. Thanks to you and your assistant for taking the time to do this research.
Nice work bud, I've been printing PA, PA6, PA11 and PA12 CF, GF and vanilla for many years, I can say, using a commercial oven regulated at 90C (+-5C) it takes me usually 72hrs to make these Filaments printable to an acceptable level, and I also use a heated filament dryer to sustain the dryness and I print with a heated chamber, I also anneal my parts, then I boil them, I have printed 100's of kg's worth of these filaments, my recommendation, is don't bother and use a good PC-CF instead :)
For the more technical/professional filaments it seems like the producers want you to use vacuum drying. A bit complicated but I think it will be much faster and more effective. I have far too many projects at the moment but perhaps there is someone out there who could test an inexpensive vacuum pump and pot and see how effective that would be.
A couple issues I can think of with trying to vacuum dry are that the water vapor itself will quickly fill the vacuum (which _is_ what you want haha), so your vacuum pump will have to run a high duty cycle (beyond what most cheap pumps are rated for). Additionally, there is the challenge of heating the filament. Convection is out with a vacuum, and both radiant and conductive heating aren't great because the filament is coiled, shielding most of it from any radiant heat, and insulating it from heat conduction. (You'll also need to a fairly large capacity water trap between the chamber and your pump, or else you'll need to change your pump oil very frequently because of water condensing in it.) So you'd want to cycle convective heating with air (ideally dry air), then pull a vacuum, repeat, yeah? Well, you've inspired me to look up how industrial vacuum dryers work!
Very interesting research, and yes completely understandable. I would have thought 70C for a few hours, maybe 8hr, would have been more than enough - but clearly not even close!
Thumbnail was amazing. Quality of the video goes without saying, but I'll say it any way. You broke 50K subscribers because of the amazing content. Good job!
I have been printing Nylon and PA12 on my X1 Carbon, I dried them both for 13 hours and they printed well from the drier, I kept the drier on while printing also. when I finish printing I put them in a vacuum bag with a bag of reusable silica gel and then vacuum seal the bag, when I took it out there was no colour change in the silica gel and so I placed it in the drier and printed with it again. Once more it printed well.
Thank you for your thought and try, very practical and rational analysis of the parts that ordinary people will pay attention to. We noticed that some manufacturers are willing to mark the heat resistance temperature of the filament spool, which makes us very happy to see some brands can consider this. This can avoid many bad situations. Anyway, good job!😊
I may have missed it, but your rooms relative hunidity is also extremely important. The rooms relative hunidity dictates the actual humidity in the heated dryer. During the winter, i can easily dry at 75-80C as my rooms relative humidity is 10-15%, but the summer the relative humidity is like 70%. I use an equation to find the heated dryers relative humidity (online calculator) to ensure the actual humidity level inside the dryer is below 0.2%
Hello, I use PA6 from SainSmart for my under the hood parts for my race cars. I dry the nylon in the home oven for a few hours, then I keep it in my filament spool dryer during the print. Then straight to a vacuum bag for storage. Thank you a lot for your scientific video, this way we can be data driven rather than wordy videos from influencers...
For the best performance moisture content should be around 0.02% in H2O or 200 ppm of water. specially for linear aliphatic polyamides. the number of carbons is important , so C6 polyamides PA6 or nylon 6 the less moisture the better( at 200ppm there's no bubbles, depending on viscosity( molecular weight) the melt flow will decrease , therefore more dimensionally accurate. for C11,12 ( nylon 1,12) the moisture content is not as " stricti" as in low aliphatic carbon chain polyamides, allowing for erxample 0.1 wt% H2O in nylon 12 ( and derivatives suchas block copolymers based on nylons). a good approach is see from which industrial grade the filament is made ( look for the technical data sheet TDS, and / or processing data sheet. it should be there). maximum driying temperature is included in these sheets, something that the filamet maker should include. the drier reaches a maxmium in moisture removal ,so after that point is pointless dry for longer times, unless you use vacuum ovens that reach over 100C. the driying conditions for nylons in general go from 70C to 110C. the impact that this have in mechanical properties is massive, not a tiny bit, massive, either in stiffness, strength , elongation at break, or the three of them, which will affect yield, touighness etc. the inconvenient for printing is the long hour prints, once dried, if you keep it at room temp, after two hours max you've just undne all the drying( this will depend where you live, tropical regions , or humid season will affect ). Final remark, Yes, you shoyuld dry PLA and every otther filament ALWAYS brefore printing :)
Impressive test Have 3 roles of Nylon spools, one with Carbon, and I just have opened one to make a wheel. Damm there are not easy to print with without dryers. Love your intensive test Thanks for sharing your expirenceses with all of us :-)
A strong correlation is what I would expect with properly calibrate equipment and a good experimental method. A follow on experiment would be to measure the temperature and humidity across the spool diameter by inserting probes within the spool at various distances.
I live in a low humidity place, most of my filaments will actually dry out after a few days of exposure. Imagine my surprise on the first spool of nylon i tried to print. it came out like an angry spitting cat, right out of the bag I put it in my spool dryer for over 24 hours at 50C, similar results. I eventually tossed it in my oven at 200F for half a day, along with a huge pile of dessicant accumulated over the last year. That finally did it, I quickly loaded the spool and dessicant into a plastic bag for safekeeping. no more issues
This is very consistent with my experience, most of the time I try to dry it for about 8 hours at 75°C, and of course I see that only the outer filament looks dry. And my biggest problem is that a very dry day where I live is about 50% rh
Awesome video! I have a simple first gen drier (SUNLU FilaDryer S1) which doesn't get very warm. I get perfect results for TPU, so when I wanted to try Nylon I chose PA12, and it worked out fine after 24h+ of drying.
If we know the weight by the length of the filament and the slicers already say how much weight and length the print will use, maybe we can just measure the filament we're going to use with a filament winder or so , cut it and only dry that filament at 120 ºC for a lot less time and then just pop it in the printer on a small spool. It could take less time because it's less material and we could bump the temperature because we don't need the spool until we wind it again
Have you ever done any kind of analysis as to permanent damage that happens to certain materials by moisture? It is completely unscientific, but I've had PLA rolls that have been left for years out of dryboxes (mostly sub 100g that's unusable at the end of a spool) and similarly aged filament that has been in dryboxes. The filament that has acquired moisture tends to be permanently damaged, despite drying. I wonder how long the permanent degradation takes to happen. Is there any concern regarding loss of plasticizers/voc's during the drying process for filaments like petg/nylon/pla, or can most of the missing weight be assumed to be just water?
That's why I have recently purchased a NINJA Air Fryer (AF140EU) that can go from 40ºC up to _too much_ temperature. Since I got a X1C, I know I'll be printing PPS-CF that needs to be dryed at 100-140ºC, and no current "filament dryer" does that kind of temps. (of course, this won't be ever used for edible things, only drying filament and dessicant). I do foresee the Air Fyer industry catching up on that sometime in the next 5 years and we will start to see "high temp" filament dryers that are just air fyers with buttons named "PLA - NYLON - PETG - SPECIAL" (and their corresponding temperatures) instead of "roast - Fry - grill"
Love your channel! I was involved in testing plastic encapsulated, high impedance devices during much of my career and did similar testing. I had better luck making the plastic wetter using humidity/steam rather than submerging in water.. Water is polar and will want to stick to itself more than leave the company of its fellow polar molecules to climb into clean plastic with a (likely) low activation energy. If you want to drive water into plastic you will likely have better luck (more weight gain) if its gaseous. An oven with elevated temperature at nearly saturated relative humidity or (even better) use an autoclave or pressure cooker (above the water line).
Big gratefullness for this very important video. Hope you will share a link to that article after it will be published. At the end you have asked filament manufacturers to write max drying temperature. AFAIK, drying mode for for polyamide-6 is around 80-85 degrees, but not more than 4-8 hours (and even then polymer should take some rest afterwards). Breaking this limits by time or temperature could have negative impact on polymer chains - it will degrade slowly (the more temperature and exposure time - the faster process is). So, related to FDM, it will impact more on final products physical and mechanical properties, than its printability. Per contra drying PA6 at 70-75C could be done almost infinitely without such degradation. But the big question - how much exactly high temp drying for long time impacts? Maybe you could make some of your usual tests for one specific material, dried before printing at different modes - for example 48 hours at 70C, 8 hours at 95 C, and maybe 2 hours at 120C?
While I support the cardboard spools I am unsure about them with the moisture sensitive materials (TPU/PA) as they can absord moisture too and will even prolong the time it takes to dry a spool as I suspect them to store some amount of moisture too.
That's quite interesting! Guess I won't be printing for a longer time. I got a sunlu filadryer s2 which can reach 70°C max. But I never checkt if this is real. At one point I used my thermal camera and the heating elements got close to 100°. Didn't want to open the case, but maybe, if you slightly manipulate the sensor and use some insulation, you should be able to reach higher temps. Only downside of this dryer is, that it should have at least a little bit of air exchenge to the outside to get rid of the humidity.
Please be careful with assumptions related to fitting a curve to data, then extending it beyond the last observed point (space shuttle Challenger case study is required reading for this). You should try a 'long study' on at least a small sample to see how it lines up. Thank you for doing the research for those of us who don't have the materials to give it a test ourselves.
Thanks for another great video. I wonder how the interior air circulation (fan) affects drying. This would apply not only to nylon but to other materials. It seems to me that more vigorous air circulation would allow for faster drying and deeper penetration beneath the surface layers on the spools.
More metal spools that have vents on the sides and on the inside of the spools to allow heat an moisture to escape. I use 80deg and dry for 3 days in my kitchen oven and print from my sunlu s4 for carbon asa and get beautiful prints. Using a filament dryer is not sufficient you need to use a oven first then like the video says use the dryer to continue to maintain moisture levels.
I use a lab grade convection oven, and your results track with my experience for Polymaker PA6 GF. 70C is NOT reasonable to get it dry initially, OTOH 95C produces good results and the convection does a great job of even heating the roll.
I’d like to borrow your Kern MLS because it seems perfect to answer a question that’s been plaguing me: is moist filament evenly moist throughout the spool? When I have brittle PLA (that snaps when I touch it) I’ve noticed that the brittleness is limited to a few loops, even with PLA that’s sat exposed (i.e. no bag, no desiccant) for 6 years. Also, my filament dryer (Sunlu S4) seems to reach the same minimum humidity level in a few hours regardless of how improperly the filament has been stored. It’s almost as if drying doesn’t matter, all that’s needed is to discard the outer layer of filament.
Now hold on to you papers, fellow scho… oh wait, wrong science UA-camr! Actually, ironically the main issue that keeps me from using PA is that I don't have the patience for the amount of drying I'd need to do. I also fear potential issues with the printed parts due to material creep, so I mostly stick to ABS/ASA or PC.
If I really need good strength (stiffness), PC-CF (usually some blend) is my favourite material. Nylon is good with layer adhesion, temperature and against impact.
Annealed at 90C Spectrum Low Warp PA6-CF15s has incredibly low creep. The single best non super expensive CF nylon on the market, and I've tried A LOT. I use it in many parts requiring long term dimensional stability and it works very well.
Thanks, prooves I am wasting my time with these 70C, if your lucky filament dryers, for drying material such as Polymaker CoPA, I think I need to look at a lab grade oven such as the Binder E28 for effectively drying this material. In particular for printing small parts with a 0.2 mm nozzle placing enough for a few jobs at a time e.g. 250mm of 1.75mm diameter filament at a time loose in an oven would probably be better than the whole spool. I can't help thinking that drying whole spools is inefficient as the depth is too great for the heat to penetrate equally. Any thoughts on this from anyone? Jim.
Great video. Interestingly, the filament that I mainly use (Fillamentum Nylon FX256 - it's PA12), the manufacturer recommends drying at 80c for 3h. Also, same manufacturer - their TPU 98A, they recommend drying at 100c for 3h. Really strange how they only recommend 80c for nylon-12 - something to do with formulation maybe?
Maybe use a camera to record the Kern MLS thus freeing Christina from watching paint, I mean filament, dry. She can later scrub through the video and note the measurements. Even a cheap home monitoring camera like Wyze would suit.
Maybe in the future a possible way will be not drying the whole spool, but a partial amount that goes into the hotend. Altough as you said, Nylon vs PLA is like 1:100 on the market? Maybe its not going to happen.
Look at it the other way around: if 320 h are needed to get to 0.2%, then no one reaches it. And since people print just fine with much shorter drying times, it means you don't actually need 0.2%.
PC has different purpose. Nylon is more impact- and temperature resistant, more flexible, better layer adhesion. For example if resistant to bending is important or tensile strength or no creeping then PC (blend)
How did you get such a paper published? It seems so trivial compared to the papers my wife writes. It is quite insane to see the difference between the fields I must say. Her paper has years of research, thousands of hours of work. And this feels like a project we used to do in our lab courses. But nevertheless, interesting data. I guess my solution with an air fryer is still quite good and nice to know that I can reduce my drying times that drastically with it.
Drying is really annoying, one of the reasons i use PC blends instead. My Petg spools need drying from time to time though, and it's really annoying. I Always try to keep RH under control in the garage, but its never as goos as indoors.
I do use Nylon albeit PA12 so might be slightly better off. Nevertheless i have noticed that my aging 55 °C dryer is only good enough to keep it dry. I wonder whether drying in a microwave would work too. At least for silica gel i only need a couple of min. There might be a significant fire hazard with the microwave though
welp. time to return my creality space pi :| I was gonna buy an air fryer but I can print from inside an air fryer. maybe I can find a metal enclosure to DIY my own? the bottom of the filament in my space pi tho is 80c which is good news? I could keep going back and rotating it every few hours but thta'd be a pain for such a long duration... I made a diy soltuion that reaches 70c pretty quick but my problem is that the container can't take more than 70c before getting soft.
I do not like the new intro and music on commentary (luckily it was only few seconds at the start). Otherwise very nice video once again. Especially liked the Excel bit with the equations and analysis. This is what I love to see from you. I agree with the others, you are best channel for filament testing. I do not print any nylon and do not hear good experiences of it because using FDM, unlike injection molding, the prints experience creep and therefore I have no use for such products that cant take real use. Currently prefer any "pure" (=as much not blend as possible) ABS/ASA (sunlu, 3do.. etc), addnorth/treed PC-PBT-CF/GF or 3dxtech EZPC-CF. Even those prefer high drying temps and I use a cheap air fryer with drying setting. Just sucks that you cant really print from it without heavy mods and it fits only 1 spool at a time.
There is a huge hole in the market for a high temp dryer. They just keep trying to gaslight people into thinking 60° C is enough. Who has time to dry nylon for a week before using it?
I found you use FAR less energy if you simply use rechargeable desiccant. I dry my desiccant by placing about half a Kg at a time into a convection oven I don't use for food anymore. 20 minutes @250F/120C and let it sit with the door open for 10 min. By then it's about 100f/38c and goes back to the filament containers. Bottoms out my cheap Amazon hydrometers I do have a filament drier that hits 60c, which I wrapped the bottom/inside with Kapton tape as I felt it got too hot, bleeding out much of the energy. When printing Nylon I see no difference between active drier or a small box with 100g of desiccant. Both have a closed PTFE tube running to the print head. With ALL that said, great video and I definitely learned something and it's good to know *You said this while I typed this part \/\/ 😅 FYI the clear bags or containers made of plastic pass humidity in through the plastic itself. Which is why bags for more expensive or sensitive filament come in foil lined bags. Same thing that keeps your chips crispy 😉
My problem is my active dryer setup can get hot enough to melt nylon, don’t need to get it that hot BUT at 80*c a lot of plastic spools start to deform and melt…. So I have to dry at 73-75*c
I have tried some nylons years ago, but the results were very poor, probably because of moisture and my inexperience in general. I still have the old spools somewhere in storage, but never looked at them in the last6 years or something... If i need something in "engineering grade" plastics and quality, i'd rather send it out to a company with professional large scale SLS printers once i verified fit and basic function with my PLA or ASA parts. Would be interesting to try and "hack" some commercial filament dryers to maybe get 10°C more out of them. I understand that this is risky, because the materials, fans, heaters and everything need to be compatible with working at that higher temperature, but i would hope they included enough safety margins to allow for a small increase, even if that possibly reduces the life of the heater and fan a little bit. Just wondering if the heaters actually can handle the required power to increase the temperature, or if that is asking too much and i should just start from scratch with making my own filament dryer box.
So i only have 55c dryer with no fan and it shuts off at 24 hrs, and i usually only give it one turn, i guess it was dry enough from the supplier, because it doesn't sound like it did anything haha
At my workplace, we use those same humidity devices to measure dampness in 3D printing pellets and wood nanocellulose materials. I like how you methodically test the filament dryers. Some channels, more interested in commissions than accuracy, just say "Buy this!". You've done a good job demonstrating how important filament drying is for ideal results when printing! Thank you for your content!
Still the best channel for filament testing
I've done a fair amount of nylon printing, PA6 & 12, regular and carbon fiber. Because it is the most difficult of all my filaments to print, I only use it on an as-needed basis, so not that often. My process involves drying it in a large benchtop food dehydrator for 12+ hours at 75C, rotating the filament a few times during this process so all sides get airflow. Then I move it into a Sunlu S2 filament dryer for printing, where I will keep drying it at 70C during the printing process. I doubt that I'm reaching anywhere near the 0.6% mark you mentioned in your video, but for 3D printing I get great results. While I store most of my filaments in vacuum bags, I don't worry much about trying to store nylon because it's so hygroscopic that it's nearly impossible to keep dry even in a vacuum bag, you always have to redry before printing, every single freaking time.
While the cardboard rolls can handle higher heat, my personal belief is that the wood fibers absorb a lot of moisture, and make drying 10x harder. Cardboard is fine for cheap PLA that you don't dry, but I notice much longer PETG drying times on cardboard spools, so I typically avoid these brands. I've not seen anyone examine the impact of cardboard spools on filament drying.
Commercial printers/filament makers/injection molding companies use a heated vacuum dryer to rapidly dry their pellets. By raising the temp with the pellets under a vacuum, you can dry nylon in 15 minutes. This is because under a vacuum the moisture boils off. I've tried to replicate this somewhat at home. I'll still dry the nylon for 12 hours, but then while it's still hot I quickly move it into a vacuum storage bag and pull a vacuum. But I don't think it works with storage bags, since the bags collapse under vacuum pressure, and the filament only feels a slight vacuum pressure, not enough to do anything. I've certainly not noticed any benefit. Even worse, those cardboard spools will crush in a vacuum bag, not a good mix at all.
PrintDry sells a filament storage canister that has a built-in vacuum. Because the canister is a rigid body, it won't collapse under vacuum, so the filament should experience more vacuum pressure, so my idea might work better with these canisters. But the PrintDry specs list a negative pressure of -20 to -25 kPa (about 75% vacuum), while commercial dryers will reach 1 millibar, which is 0.1 kPa, an astonishing 99.9% vacuum. So my hunch is that the PrintDry vacuum might be too weak for vacuum assisted drying. But perhaps you could heat a nylon roll for 3-4 hours, then vacuum it while hot to quickly remove the remaining moisture.
Could make for some interesting videos if you decide to test!!! Yes, CNC Kitchen did do a vacuum drying experiment, but he kept the vacuum rolls at room temp. It's well established that the vacuum process needs heat to be successful. It's worth mentioning that the vacuum chamber he used is much better than the PrintDry cannister. Those chambers can reach 40 microns, about 0.002 kPa, or 99.995% vacuum, exceeding even the commercial plastic dryers. They cost a little more, but might be worth it.
I’m similar, I use PLA for first prototypes and fit tests and then move up to better materials as needed, my current goto being polycarbonate. I tend to only use nylons for final versions if other materials aren’t good enough due to how much nylon costs. A good CF nylon can be many times more expensive than PLA and even a few times more expensive than PC but sometimes you need it for the strength and stiffness.
I have found the Bambu PC to be a good all round filament whilst cheap. It isn’t as good as some other brands of PC but it is significantly easier to print and is relatively cheap with a good increase in properties over PLA, PETG or ABS.
I tend to avoid PA6 though due to its moisture issues, the mechanical properties drop off rapidly even with just a few days, PA12 is better long term in those situations. The PA6 is the strongest and stiffest right after printing but very quickly it degrades below that of the PA12, since most of my uses are in relatively normal room environments it just makes more sense to use the PA12. I haven’t tried sealing PA6 yet though with a coating but I have heard it can work. If I really need high stiffness there are other options though, like PET-CF or just using metal rods.
@PaulStevensonPinball Thank you for sharing this. Very interesting.
I share your aversion to cardboard spools. They should have just switched to refill filaments instead of cardboard for the environment. It's pointless.
All ptfe tubes of my printers and the AMS of my 'Bimbo' printer hates this. Plus I have cardboard lines on my filament dryer rollers. If I use electrical tape (which rated for 90°C), the spool won't rotate well on my rollers (Polyphemus). I'd have to order some rubber tubing or respool all cardboard filaments.
@conorstewart2214
PET-CF🤘 Have you tried QIDI's? It's just rebranded Kexcelled. From all the data sheets I downloaded from them, one was clearly from Kexcelled. They must've uploaded the wrong one.
I wanted to print a split keyboard (chasis) for my brother using PA12-CF..... but noticed I had quite some issues with the filament. I dried it in the X1C printer (BambuLabs) for 12hrs @90C....the print however requires Support material for the PA.... How would you go about printing with 2 such filaments simultaneously? ...as well as drying them.....simultaneously...
Should I give up and print in another material?
@@peterklemenc6194 There is some PA compatible "breakaway" support material that may work for you. I think the XYPOLYER brand carries it, but I've not tried it. Personally, on my MK4 I pre-printed some bridge supports in PETG, then used a pause command on the PA print and dropped in the supports. This only works for simple geometries, though, but perhaps you could use this approach. On my 5-tool Prusa XL I have used PETG as support material for PA, and that works great, but I don't think the X1C can perform this trick.
@@peterklemenc6194 , I Have a few vacuum chambers I store my nylons in. Like you I dry tem for 8-12 hours in a dehydrator, then put them in the vacuum chamber along with a cannister of desiccant and pull a 99-99.5% vacuum using a normal two stage vacuum pump. This have worked well for me but it would have been nice to see proper tests. The equpment isn't horribly expensive btw.
Geeeeez! The difference in drying time between 70º or 90º is SO HUGE! That's impressive!
Amazing! You have scientifically proven my empirical conclusions and I am glad that I did not make a mistake in choosing the path. I have been working for about a year on a dryer project for plastics such as PA6 and the like. The dryer heats the plastic up to 100C, but this is only a software limitation. And yes, nylon is printed directly from the dryer and the quality is excellent!
Care to share more?
Wow! What a cool scale! It dries AND COOKS!!!!! Lovely video Igor!!! Thanks! PS: loved the Math!
So far I didn't lost subscribers on the Math part, but I will see in few days how many viewers skipped that part 🙂
@@MyTechFun Unfortunately I have already subscribed, otherwise I would have subscribed because of the maths part! 🙂
ive been using my Sunlu S4 and my Eibos Cyclops to dry nylon and they both do a sterling job at drying it. The trick is once dried keep it in the dry box. After printing I even retract the filament from the bowden tube back into the dry box.
The Sunlu S4 auto humidity function is also super useful here.
Yes, perfectly agree. I forgot to mention in the video, after printing filament goes to dry box
Thank you so much for this video. We couldn't figure out how people get away with 70 degrees, because in our lab we get the moisture out of filament only at drying at 115-120°C for 5-6h. We measure the spool weight each hour and these are the settings that get rid of moisture.
Also note that the dryers that say 70C don't actually reach 70.
You hit the nail on the head. The number of hobby printers printing with Nylon or Polycarbonate is quite low. Manufacturers of both filament and dryers probably will not be catering to those consumers anytime soon. That being said, the number of affordable machines capable of printing engineering grade filaments is growing, so there is a possibility of strides being made in the future.
My experience with Nylon(both CF and non) has been good but I keep my spools in a dryer full time. I typically print parts that require both strength and temperature as well as UV resistance, so I am always printing in PC, PA, ASA and the like.
It is obvious you are a good teacher as I was able to follow everything you showed in this video and I am a horrible student.
Keep up the good work. This is the best channel on YT for 3D printing!
It is nice to see some real life science on UA-cam, the 3d printer space is a bit short on such things :)
Best Thumbnail lol!
Right? Flamethrower is never the wrong choice 😆
Love the thumbnail 😂
Excellent topic, Igor. Thanks.
I print mostly in TPU with some CF Nylon. I use a near commercial grade food dehydrator for drying my filament. It gets to 85 decrees C. The downside is it has a maximum on-time of 24 hours before it shuts itself off. I find it interesting that it doesn't seem to dry my filament as well as my filament storage box, which uses a reptile terrarium heating pad underneath and an activated alumina desiccant cartridge at the top. Thanks to you and your assistant for taking the time to do this research.
Awesome video, I really like the scientific method, thank you so much for this useful information!
As always, the best ever tests are done regarding to the topic.
Nice work bud, I've been printing PA, PA6, PA11 and PA12 CF, GF and vanilla for many years, I can say, using a commercial oven regulated at 90C (+-5C) it takes me usually 72hrs to make these Filaments printable to an acceptable level, and I also use a heated filament dryer to sustain the dryness and I print with a heated chamber, I also anneal my parts, then I boil them, I have printed 100's of kg's worth of these filaments, my recommendation, is don't bother and use a good PC-CF instead :)
Thx for sharing the real deal filament drying experience and results.
Excellent work! Thank you for your time and effort!
Brilliant video as always!
Thank you, I am glad that you find it useful!
Fantastic video you are doing great work
For the more technical/professional filaments it seems like the producers want you to use vacuum drying. A bit complicated but I think it will be much faster and more effective. I have far too many projects at the moment but perhaps there is someone out there who could test an inexpensive vacuum pump and pot and see how effective that would be.
A couple issues I can think of with trying to vacuum dry are that the water vapor itself will quickly fill the vacuum (which _is_ what you want haha), so your vacuum pump will have to run a high duty cycle (beyond what most cheap pumps are rated for). Additionally, there is the challenge of heating the filament. Convection is out with a vacuum, and both radiant and conductive heating aren't great because the filament is coiled, shielding most of it from any radiant heat, and insulating it from heat conduction.
(You'll also need to a fairly large capacity water trap between the chamber and your pump, or else you'll need to change your pump oil very frequently because of water condensing in it.)
So you'd want to cycle convective heating with air (ideally dry air), then pull a vacuum, repeat, yeah?
Well, you've inspired me to look up how industrial vacuum dryers work!
Awesome information. Thanks! Much appreciated.
Very interesting research, and yes completely understandable. I would have thought 70C for a few hours, maybe 8hr, would have been more than enough - but clearly not even close!
Excellent data thank you very much
Thumbnail was amazing. Quality of the video goes without saying, but I'll say it any way. You broke 50K subscribers because of the amazing content. Good job!
Wow! Such interesting and useful results, thanks!
(BTW, I _loved_ the math part!👍👍👍)
I have been printing Nylon and PA12 on my X1 Carbon, I dried them both for 13 hours and they printed well from the drier, I kept the drier on while printing also. when I finish printing I put them in a vacuum bag with a bag of reusable silica gel and then vacuum seal the bag, when I took it out there was no colour change in the silica gel and so I placed it in the drier and printed with it again.
Once more it printed well.
Thank you for your thought and try, very practical and rational analysis of the parts that ordinary people will pay attention to.
We noticed that some manufacturers are willing to mark the heat resistance temperature of the filament spool, which makes us very happy to see some brands can consider this. This can avoid many bad situations.
Anyway, good job!😊
I may have missed it, but your rooms relative hunidity is also extremely important. The rooms relative hunidity dictates the actual humidity in the heated dryer. During the winter, i can easily dry at 75-80C as my rooms relative humidity is 10-15%, but the summer the relative humidity is like 70%. I use an equation to find the heated dryers relative humidity (online calculator) to ensure the actual humidity level inside the dryer is below 0.2%
Excellent work and a great benefit to the 3D printing community. Thanks
That's an eye-opener. Thanks Igor (and Zkristina).
Hello, I use PA6 from SainSmart for my under the hood parts for my race cars. I dry the nylon in the home oven for a few hours, then I keep it in my filament spool dryer during the print. Then straight to a vacuum bag for storage. Thank you a lot for your scientific video, this way we can be data driven rather than wordy videos from influencers...
For the best performance moisture content should be around 0.02% in H2O or 200 ppm of water. specially for linear aliphatic polyamides. the number of carbons is important , so C6 polyamides PA6 or nylon 6 the less moisture the better( at 200ppm there's no bubbles, depending on viscosity( molecular weight) the melt flow will decrease , therefore more dimensionally accurate. for C11,12 ( nylon 1,12) the moisture content is not as " stricti" as in low aliphatic carbon chain polyamides, allowing for erxample 0.1 wt% H2O in nylon 12 ( and derivatives suchas block copolymers based on nylons). a good approach is see from which industrial grade the filament is made ( look for the technical data sheet TDS, and / or processing data sheet. it should be there). maximum driying temperature is included in these sheets, something that the filamet maker should include. the drier reaches a maxmium in moisture removal ,so after that point is pointless dry for longer times, unless you use vacuum ovens that reach over 100C. the driying conditions for nylons in general go from 70C to 110C. the impact that this have in mechanical properties is massive, not a tiny bit, massive, either in stiffness, strength , elongation at break, or the three of them, which will affect yield, touighness etc. the inconvenient for printing is the long hour prints, once dried, if you keep it at room temp, after two hours max you've just undne all the drying( this will depend where you live, tropical regions , or humid season will affect ). Final remark, Yes, you shoyuld dry PLA and every otther filament ALWAYS brefore printing :)
Impressive test
Have 3 roles of Nylon spools, one with Carbon, and I just have opened one to make a wheel. Damm there are not easy to print with without dryers.
Love your intensive test
Thanks for sharing your expirenceses with all of us :-)
Stopped in to drop a like and a comment just for that thumbnail alone!
Awesome video! Thanks for doing this research and presenting this to us!
Thank You!
Great Info, thanks
A strong correlation is what I would expect with properly calibrate equipment and a good experimental method. A follow on experiment would be to measure the temperature and humidity across the spool diameter by inserting probes within the spool at various distances.
Could you send a link to your paper when it's published?
I will add link into this description (or maybe even a YT post), but it is a very slow process (writing, review, publishing..). Probably half years 😞
That thumbnail is incredible 🤣
I live in a low humidity place, most of my filaments will actually dry out after a few days of exposure.
Imagine my surprise on the first spool of nylon i tried to print. it came out like an angry spitting cat, right out of the bag
I put it in my spool dryer for over 24 hours at 50C, similar results.
I eventually tossed it in my oven at 200F for half a day, along with a huge pile of dessicant accumulated over the last year.
That finally did it, I quickly loaded the spool and dessicant into a plastic bag for safekeeping. no more issues
Nice 🎉.
Really interesting as always !
I always use a cheap hoven for my nylon.
Especially because dry are to low temp and too expressive as well.
Always great content, thank you!
This is very consistent with my experience, most of the time I try to dry it for about 8 hours at 75°C, and of course I see that only the outer filament looks dry. And my biggest problem is that a very dry day where I live is about 50% rh
Awesome video! I have a simple first gen drier (SUNLU FilaDryer S1) which doesn't get very warm.
I get perfect results for TPU, so when I wanted to try Nylon I chose PA12, and it worked out fine after 24h+ of drying.
Great video! Thanks
Printdry has a filament dryer rated to 85°C.
Oh, I didn't know about them. Good to know, thank you for info. I will try to contact them, if they want a review for that dryer.
If we know the weight by the length of the filament and the slicers already say how much weight and length the print will use, maybe we can just measure the filament we're going to use with a filament winder or so , cut it and only dry that filament at 120 ºC for a lot less time and then just pop it in the printer on a small spool. It could take less time because it's less material and we could bump the temperature because we don't need the spool until we wind it again
Have you ever done any kind of analysis as to permanent damage that happens to certain materials by moisture? It is completely unscientific, but I've had PLA rolls that have been left for years out of dryboxes (mostly sub 100g that's unusable at the end of a spool) and similarly aged filament that has been in dryboxes. The filament that has acquired moisture tends to be permanently damaged, despite drying. I wonder how long the permanent degradation takes to happen.
Is there any concern regarding loss of plasticizers/voc's during the drying process for filaments like petg/nylon/pla, or can most of the missing weight be assumed to be just water?
lol love the thumbnail
Great videos as always!
Thank's, that was very useful information.
That's why I have recently purchased a NINJA Air Fryer (AF140EU) that can go from 40ºC up to _too much_ temperature. Since I got a X1C, I know I'll be printing PPS-CF that needs to be dryed at 100-140ºC, and no current "filament dryer" does that kind of temps. (of course, this won't be ever used for edible things, only drying filament and dessicant).
I do foresee the Air Fyer industry catching up on that sometime in the next 5 years and we will start to see "high temp" filament dryers that are just air fyers with buttons named "PLA - NYLON - PETG - SPECIAL" (and their corresponding temperatures) instead of "roast - Fry - grill"
I have been wondering that myself. I always dry my nylon in my Oven at 110c because i dont trust my 70c food dehydrator to remove all the moisture
Which spool material?
@@vim55k Cardboard. Seems to hold up so far...
It would be interesting to know how it would compare to vacuum drying.
I use heatbed for drying nylon. I place necessary amount of coils (not whole spool) under cardboard box for 12 hours 80-85 degrees
love your thumbnail!
Love your channel! I was involved in testing plastic encapsulated, high impedance devices during much of my career and did similar testing. I had better luck making the plastic wetter using humidity/steam rather than submerging in water.. Water is polar and will want to stick to itself more than leave the company of its fellow polar molecules to climb into clean plastic with a (likely) low activation energy. If you want to drive water into plastic you will likely have better luck (more weight gain) if its gaseous. An oven with elevated temperature at nearly saturated relative humidity or (even better) use an autoclave or pressure cooker (above the water line).
Big gratefullness for this very important video. Hope you will share a link to that article after it will be published.
At the end you have asked filament manufacturers to write max drying temperature.
AFAIK, drying mode for for polyamide-6 is around 80-85 degrees, but not more than 4-8 hours (and even then polymer should take some rest afterwards).
Breaking this limits by time or temperature could have negative impact on polymer chains - it will degrade slowly (the more temperature and exposure time - the faster process is).
So, related to FDM, it will impact more on final products physical and mechanical properties, than its printability. Per contra drying PA6 at 70-75C could be done almost infinitely without such degradation.
But the big question - how much exactly high temp drying for long time impacts?
Maybe you could make some of your usual tests for one specific material, dried before printing at different modes - for example 48 hours at 70C, 8 hours at 95 C, and maybe 2 hours at 120C?
While I support the cardboard spools I am unsure about them with the moisture sensitive materials (TPU/PA) as they can absord moisture too and will even prolong the time it takes to dry a spool as I suspect them to store some amount of moisture too.
That's quite interesting! Guess I won't be printing for a longer time.
I got a sunlu filadryer s2 which can reach 70°C max. But I never checkt if this is real. At one point I used my thermal camera and the heating elements got close to 100°. Didn't want to open the case, but maybe, if you slightly manipulate the sensor and use some insulation, you should be able to reach higher temps.
Only downside of this dryer is, that it should have at least a little bit of air exchenge to the outside to get rid of the humidity.
Please be careful with assumptions related to fitting a curve to data, then extending it beyond the last observed point (space shuttle Challenger case study is required reading for this). You should try a 'long study' on at least a small sample to see how it lines up. Thank you for doing the research for those of us who don't have the materials to give it a test ourselves.
Thanks for another great video. I wonder how the interior air circulation (fan) affects drying. This would apply not only to nylon but to other materials. It seems to me that more vigorous air circulation would allow for faster drying and deeper penetration beneath the surface layers on the spools.
What about setting up camera and read value from footage ?
For reading values from screen? To me, it was simpler to ask Kristina to follow it. She will not run out from Battery 😀
@@MyTechFun poor Kristina 😅
More metal spools that have vents on the sides and on the inside of the spools to allow heat an moisture to escape. I use 80deg and dry for 3 days in my kitchen oven and print from my sunlu s4 for carbon asa and get beautiful prints. Using a filament dryer is not sufficient you need to use a oven first then like the video says use the dryer to continue to maintain moisture levels.
My results with PCTPE got dramatically better once I dried it for two days in a Polyphemos and then used the dryer as a dry box.
Thanks for this :)
I use a lab grade convection oven, and your results track with my experience for Polymaker PA6 GF. 70C is NOT reasonable to get it dry initially, OTOH 95C produces good results and the convection does a great job of even heating the roll.
Hello! Thank you for your interesting and very scientific content of your videos! Have you ever tried to dry out filament with a vacuum oven?
I’d like to borrow your Kern MLS because it seems perfect to answer a question that’s been plaguing me: is moist filament evenly moist throughout the spool?
When I have brittle PLA (that snaps when I touch it) I’ve noticed that the brittleness is limited to a few loops, even with PLA that’s sat exposed (i.e. no bag, no desiccant) for 6 years. Also, my filament dryer (Sunlu S4) seems to reach the same minimum humidity level in a few hours regardless of how improperly the filament has been stored. It’s almost as if drying doesn’t matter, all that’s needed is to discard the outer layer of filament.
Now hold on to you papers, fellow scho… oh wait, wrong science UA-camr!
Actually, ironically the main issue that keeps me from using PA is that I don't have the patience for the amount of drying I'd need to do. I also fear potential issues with the printed parts due to material creep, so I mostly stick to ABS/ASA or PC.
If I really need good strength (stiffness), PC-CF (usually some blend) is my favourite material. Nylon is good with layer adhesion, temperature and against impact.
Annealed at 90C Spectrum Low Warp PA6-CF15s has incredibly low creep. The single best non super expensive CF nylon on the market, and I've tried A LOT. I use it in many parts requiring long term dimensional stability and it works very well.
Thanks, prooves I am wasting my time with these 70C, if your lucky filament dryers, for drying material such as Polymaker CoPA, I think I need to look at a lab grade oven such as the Binder E28 for effectively drying this material. In particular for printing small parts with a 0.2 mm nozzle placing enough for a few jobs at a time e.g. 250mm of 1.75mm diameter filament at a time loose in an oven would probably be better than the whole spool. I can't help thinking that drying whole spools is inefficient as the depth is too great for the heat to penetrate equally. Any thoughts on this from anyone? Jim.
Great video. Interestingly, the filament that I mainly use (Fillamentum Nylon FX256 - it's PA12), the manufacturer recommends drying at 80c for 3h. Also, same manufacturer - their TPU 98A, they recommend drying at 100c for 3h. Really strange how they only recommend 80c for nylon-12 - something to do with formulation maybe?
Maybe use a camera to record the Kern MLS thus freeing Christina from watching paint, I mean filament, dry. She can later scrub through the video and note the measurements. Even a cheap home monitoring camera like Wyze would suit.
You're doing excellent work keep it up.
Any idea how drying the nylon would go using a heated bed at 100c with a box over it?
Who Hates PLA? ABS, PC, NYLON for life! Dont print toys, Print tools!
How about a dryer that slowly unwinds from one spool to an empty spool and repeat all within in the same box?
WANHAO BOX 2 filament dryer can go up to 110c, I believe
I use nylon, both regular and carbon filled
Thx. Which brand is your choice?
Maybe in the future a possible way will be not drying the whole spool, but a partial amount that goes into the hotend. Altough as you said, Nylon vs PLA is like 1:100 on the market? Maybe its not going to happen.
Drywise does inline drying. 👍
Look at it the other way around: if 320 h are needed to get to 0.2%, then no one reaches it. And since people print just fine with much shorter drying times, it means you don't actually need 0.2%.
can you do this for pccf, asacf and absgf please ?
I find Polycarbonate more useful than nylon for functional prototyping, I would love to see the same video for PC.
PC has different purpose. Nylon is more impact- and temperature resistant, more flexible, better layer adhesion. For example if resistant to bending is important or tensile strength or no creeping then PC (blend)
How did you get such a paper published? It seems so trivial compared to the papers my wife writes.
It is quite insane to see the difference between the fields I must say. Her paper has years of research, thousands of hours of work. And this feels like a project we used to do in our lab courses.
But nevertheless, interesting data. I guess my solution with an air fryer is still quite good and nice to know that I can reduce my drying times that drastically with it.
There are many types of publications.. bigger ones, summary of years of work and partial results too.
Drying is really annoying, one of the reasons i use PC blends instead. My Petg spools need drying from time to time though, and it's really annoying. I Always try to keep RH under control in the garage, but its never as goos as indoors.
I do use Nylon albeit PA12 so might be slightly better off. Nevertheless i have noticed that my aging 55 °C dryer is only good enough to keep it dry.
I wonder whether drying in a microwave would work too. At least for silica gel i only need a couple of min. There might be a significant fire hazard with the microwave though
Printing PA6-CF after drying for 48 hours at 70C and it’s working but still has a little stringing
Here’s a question: If the filament is stored with desiccant at room temp and
welp. time to return my creality space pi :| I was gonna buy an air fryer but I can print from inside an air fryer. maybe I can find a metal enclosure to DIY my own?
the bottom of the filament in my space pi tho is 80c which is good news? I could keep going back and rotating it every few hours but thta'd be a pain for such a long duration...
I made a diy soltuion that reaches 70c pretty quick but my problem is that the container can't take more than 70c before getting soft.
I do not like the new intro and music on commentary (luckily it was only few seconds at the start). Otherwise very nice video once again. Especially liked the Excel bit with the equations and analysis. This is what I love to see from you. I agree with the others, you are best channel for filament testing.
I do not print any nylon and do not hear good experiences of it because using FDM, unlike injection molding, the prints experience creep and therefore I have no use for such products that cant take real use. Currently prefer any "pure" (=as much not blend as possible) ABS/ASA (sunlu, 3do.. etc), addnorth/treed PC-PBT-CF/GF or 3dxtech EZPC-CF. Even those prefer high drying temps and I use a cheap air fryer with drying setting. Just sucks that you cant really print from it without heavy mods and it fits only 1 spool at a time.
I like the new intro and music so our opinions cancel out. 🤣
There is a huge hole in the market for a high temp dryer. They just keep trying to gaslight people into thinking 60° C is enough. Who has time to dry nylon for a week before using it?
I found you use FAR less energy if you simply use rechargeable desiccant. I dry my desiccant by placing about half a Kg at a time into a convection oven I don't use for food anymore. 20 minutes @250F/120C and let it sit with the door open for 10 min. By then it's about 100f/38c and goes back to the filament containers. Bottoms out my cheap Amazon hydrometers
I do have a filament drier that hits 60c, which I wrapped the bottom/inside with Kapton tape as I felt it got too hot, bleeding out much of the energy. When printing Nylon I see no difference between active drier or a small box with 100g of desiccant. Both have a closed PTFE tube running to the print head.
With ALL that said, great video and I definitely learned something and it's good to know
*You said this while I typed this part \/\/ 😅
FYI the clear bags or containers made of plastic pass humidity in through the plastic itself. Which is why bags for more expensive or sensitive filament come in foil lined bags. Same thing that keeps your chips crispy 😉
My problem is my active dryer setup can get hot enough to melt nylon, don’t need to get it that hot BUT at 80*c a lot of plastic spools start to deform and melt…. So I have to dry at 73-75*c
I have tried some nylons years ago, but the results were very poor, probably because of moisture and my inexperience in general. I still have the old spools somewhere in storage, but never looked at them in the last6 years or something... If i need something in "engineering grade" plastics and quality, i'd rather send it out to a company with professional large scale SLS printers once i verified fit and basic function with my PLA or ASA parts.
Would be interesting to try and "hack" some commercial filament dryers to maybe get 10°C more out of them. I understand that this is risky, because the materials, fans, heaters and everything need to be compatible with working at that higher temperature, but i would hope they included enough safety margins to allow for a small increase, even if that possibly reduces the life of the heater and fan a little bit. Just wondering if the heaters actually can handle the required power to increase the temperature, or if that is asking too much and i should just start from scratch with making my own filament dryer box.
How much airflow matters? If we put wet clothes on the rope on a windy day it drys fast, same principle should have an effect
I'm curious how common 10% humidity is on nylon filament. If you leave it out in 50% relative humidity, how long will it take to absorb 10% water?
So i only have 55c dryer with no fan and it shuts off at 24 hrs, and i usually only give it one turn, i guess it was dry enough from the supplier, because it doesn't sound like it did anything haha