If I only have one printer and just using a single spool of filament is going to take forever, but I happen to have 10 boxes of filament that are different colors/ actual types. So there’s a valid reason. Open them all. Is this something I should be wary about if I know I’m not going to use any one of these spools entirely for well over a year?
This is especially targeting filaments that are very expensive and you are purposely only saving them for special projects.
Note try to keep your comments Under the assumption, That a vacuum sealer is not available whatsoever, Beyond the cheap vacuum ones that are meant to compact clothes.
I have many spools which I have had open for a couple of years now, just make sure that you store it in the original bag with the desiccant packets still in the bag. Generally PLA will stay good for quite some time but some other materials like PETG and TPU will need to be dried out once they have been opened.
Yeah aside from some PLA, from the 3D printing Canada boxing Day sale, to just try out like wood, carbon fiber, transparent, a few different petg, and ABS I believe too.
Right now I have a 1kg box of fossil gray polyterra pla open, polymax pla open yellow, and a semi-transparent white polyflex TPU that’s open.
I would really like to try those other filaments just to see how they look and if my printer is tuned well enough to even run them, but I’m also scared of opening 20 kg worth of plastic at once
I would highly recommend getting set up to dry filament. Keeping it dry is of course best, but there will inevitably be rolls that eventually absorb too much moisture, or, as I have experienced, arrive in their sealed packaging already in need of being dried. I would recommend getting a decent food dehydrator. You can get dryers designed specifically for filament, but most are only lightly modified food dehydrators being sold for a higher price. I just made a different enclosure to go on my dehydrator out of a 3 gallon pail. My dehydrator has paid for itself many times over. I would recommend anyone doing any significant amount of FDM printing should invest in a way to dry filament. I bought mine for under $70 about 3 years back if my memory serves.
I have open filament from 2017. It prints fine. I rarely dry PLA I just keep it in a sealed bag, sometimes I put desiccant in it sometimes not. I think the sealed bag is the important part, PLA is forgiving of moisture it tolerates a fair bit before it has issues.
I went the route of buying the vacuum bags and a little battery powered pump - because I live in an area that’s just too bloody humid all the time, and I found my pla would pop and sizzle as the water in it got hot enough, and after a month, the pla becomes too brittle for either a bowden style or direct drive feed.
Even the type of vacuum bags you mention will be better than exposure if your pla comes in bags that can’t be resealed - I’d say so far, only 25% of the stuff I’ve purchased came in a reusable bag. You could even use the larger format ziplock freezer bags.
If you need lots of desiccant, visit Michaels or any craft shop, or order from Amazon - get the silica gel beads for drying flower arrangements, and get some small burlap or cotton or-what-have-you party favour bags from the same place to put the desiccant in. It’s a lot more cost effective than buying pre-packed desiccant packs. And you can empty the bags, and dry the stuff out, and re-use it much more easily if you’re so inclined.
One of the local PC shops sells some 3d Printer kit, and they had a 50% sale on a single spool filament dryer, and my plan is to rig it up to sit above my printer for use on long jobs (I’m not kidding about the humidity where I am), but I too, use my food dehydrator - I found and printed out some walls and just taped them together. It handles 2 spools if I need it to.
Like everything else in 3D Printing, you’ll figure out what works best for you, one way or another
That is more than my single roll hex dryer was. There is so many options these days the need of frankstein-diy isn’t always necessary. Mine was somewhat less than 50$ and it monitors the humidity and auto offs when it drops. (sorta a scam if you understand RH but … I’d say that for most.)
