I could use some help building a custom drying box for filament. I know how I want the box to be built but I’m scratching my head on how to build a healing element for it. I want to replicate the front panel of commercial boxes.
Anyone have ideas?
Things I can think of that I’ll need, thermistor, pcb, power, the ability to use a screen for temp and time setting, input buttons (increased and decrease of values) possible humidity sensor
people use temp controllers with ac outlets for homebrew and hydroponics. 30min version is to to stick one of these into a box and plug in a heat source. there are many variants but they usually look something like this: CONTROLLER 76, Temperature and Humidity Outlet Controller - AC Infinity
Is a drying oven too expensive? This is $135. Vacuum ovens are about twice that.
CAUTION: Alibaba link
This is likely to be a lot less grief than building one yourself.
I can program an ATMEGA328P (chip used in Arduino) if that helps!
Well we need like 10 of em in the space. I’d like to make it so they can dry out filament as well as be a dry box. But it’s not a deal breaker if I can’t do the drying part but figure I ask before I start the build
10? That’s a lot of filament dryers.
I mentioned the vacuum ones because they are vastly faster at pulling water out of things than just heat by itself. We use them for BGA semiconductor chips as well as PCB boards when they need to be baked.
After you dry filament, does it really suck up water that quickly? Normally when I do vacuum baking I can then put the chips back into a sealed bag ESD bag (think metallized Ziploc baggie) and they hold for at least a couple weeks. If I’m really being thorough, I’ll blow some nitrogen into the bag before sealing it up.
With the new PrusaXLs we are getting they come with two print heads and we will probably upgrade to 5 on at least one of them at some point in the future. This is really about having filament ready and loaded to use as much as possible. The 3D print area will have 8 filament printers hopefully by the end of the year. The plan is to buy one print dry and run four spools from that. The rest would be either running off single dry boxes or something else. I haven’t really put it to paper just yet to optimize the idea.
What about simply reducing the humidity in the container the filament is stored in?
There are a few different options:
Peltier components aren’t hard to find, or you can get an assembly in the form of a room dehumidifier. $50 new, or much less at goodwill. Heat pumps can be found in mini-fridges, ice makers, air conditioners, etc, but would be a lot harder to work with.
I’m not overly familiar with 3D printing in general, so forgive me if I say something dumb, but I am a chemical engineer and work a lot with materials that need to get and stay quite dry.
Is there a reason the filament box (I assume this is just a box to store filament before use), needs to be heated or have time control features? Or is the goal just to keep the filament dry? If it’s the latter, the simplest solution would be to buy or build a cheap desiccator cabinet and some Drierite (Drierite - Indicating Drierite). It’ll have a built in hygrometer to monitor humidity, and you can just get some of the indicating Drierite to mix in with the regular drierite to see when to regenerate it. Most thermoplastics are fairly hydrophobic, so keeping them in a desiccator should be more than sufficient to keep them dry. Another bonus, it’s just a sealed box so you don’t even need to plug it in.
Sealed box with desiccator should be enough as far as keeping dry filament dry in my opinion. Making non-dry filament dry again may need some heat involved, but it doesn’t seem like we’d need 10 of them from my perspective. Seems relatively rare that it would be necessary. Maybe something simple like a laser cut box with a hole for a hairdryer to be stuck in. Or an off the shelf food dehydrator.
@mkmiller6 many filament types like PLA, Nylon, PVA, and ABS are fairly hygroscopic. They wont necessarily be ruined in days but quality can decrease over time
I suppose it’s all relative in the end. I work with polymers, like PVP and polyacids, that will absorb 40-100% of their weight in water if left out, and they do just fine in a desiccator. My point being that a polymer that absorbs maybe 5-10% in the worst case is probably going to be fine in a desiccator.
The premise is that there would be a filament box next to each machine, more so for the machines that have multiple extruders so people can use more than one Filament at a time. So while ten may seem overkill it doesn’t hurt to have them either (especially if I’m hand making them) if people want to do long prints this would eliminate the chance for more hydroscopic materials to absorb moisture during the length of the print. Longer term storage will be in the larger tubs in vacuum sealed bags with desiccants.
That makes sense, I think its a good idea to have dry boxes which house the filament while in use rather than just for long term storage. Just not sure how necessary it is for those boxes to also be drying boxes that are heated. Seems like 10 dry boxes w/ dessicant and 1-2 heated boxes for drying would do the trick. But upon closer reading of your previous posts it seems like we’re on the same page anyway, so this comment isn’t super helpful haha sorry
So do you envision the filament being housed in the dry boxes while it is being fed to the printer? If so, you’ll just need some kind of rudimentary sealing mechanism so you’re not constantly having to regenerate desiccant. Maybe just a simple flexible seal that the filament can be fed through while in use that can be closed off when not in use (maybe like this: https://www.amazon.com/Tramec-Sloan-Umbrella-Rubber-Black/dp/B076FBQJHR).
I’d most likely use these Amazon.com : 12mm cable glands and use PTFE tubing as a sheath to the extruder.
I know I’ve seen pics of airtight filament containers somewhere, try searching hackaday or thingiverse if you need inspiration or to know what specific containers fit well.
I’m doing custom build with acrylic sheets and Acrylic cement so all of that is planned out and should be good.
Filament dryer boxes from Sovol:
Creality dryer on Aliexpress:
It seems that these run about $25 per spool (the Sovol are $50 but hold two spools and seems to have an actual humidity sensor).
I’m sure they’ve cut all sorts of corners that I would never dream of cutting, but I suspect that you can’t get the raw parts for that price. They apparently also have silicone seals so you can just put in dessicant for storage without powering them.