Steaming filament?

Just out of the vacuum pack. Think it might be wet? 3DPC PETG carbon/fiber

Upside is I discovered the new firmware has an automatics load and unload button that work great.

yup that is soaking. I have the exact same filament and it was poping and making all sorts of unhappy noises. I ended up tossing it in my dryer for 6 hours.

I was going to use the transparent red PETG I have to make a ring for the food dehydrator but it’s wet too so I just used a cut-off pail as the ring and left it also for 6 hours with the 2 rolls in there. It gave me the opportunity to put PLA back on and print some of the backlog of stuff my wife has found heh.

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I seem to spend a lot of time fiddling for somebody else, funny how that happens.

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Get a filament dryer…once i started using one a lot of problems went away…https://www.printdry.com

I took awhile to jump on a filament drying system and opted for the food dehydrator. If i had a questionable roll id just stop useing it and go onto my next roll. Now ive got a backlog of a bunch of colours to choose from :smiley: though it only took me a few days to put everything through the dryer. Im glad j did finally jump on it.

@Dr.Marvin what is the advantage of a food dehydrator over a filament dryer? I curious what drove your decision?

I looked at both and made the opposite decision. I opted for a filament dryer as I can run the dryer while printing and it had a build in timer.

I found the food dehydrator to be a cheaper yet equally functional alternative. Currently i only have printed with PLA, PETG and TPU. If i were to print with nylon i would prefer a proper filament dryer. That being said I could still print from my dryer with a simple bearing installation, and ptfe tube mod. I dont intend on useing the food dehydrator for food, so i dont feel bad modifying it for my purpouses, but it wouldnt take much to bring it back to its original role. It dosent have a scale, moisture detector or timer, but its simple, cheap and serves otherwise the same job as a proper dehydrator.

Sometimes i do kinda wish i had a proper dehydrator beacuse it might be better oriented for saving space and look better, but im into 3d printing as a hobby so being budget friendly is more important to me.

The only downside i see from a filament dryer is it looks more restrictive for different sized spools, like 2kg+. Though i havent looked deeply into that and dont think it would be a make or break reason to prefer one over the other.

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Well said! When I was looking I found the dehydrator and drier to be the same price basically (65$) give or take. I bought mine the Sunlu because it was wider. I do print nylon so printing while drying was a positive.

I looked at food dehydrators as compared to the eSun filament dehydrator and went with the eSun.

The way I look at it, after I’ve already spent $570 on filament in the last 5 months. An extra $20 for a dedicated dehydrator isn’t going to make an appreciable difference.

Have you ever kept a running spreadsheet on what this hobby actually costs? It’s surprisingly expensive. I’ve stopped telling people they should get a 3D printer unless I know they’re really interested because you can really nickle and dime yourself to death with one.

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Printdry can accomodate a 2kg spool and even have used it for a 4kg spool

yes I have a fairly good records of costs. I get quite annoyed when I realized I spent more on my cheap printer than the “expensive” one… I order 200-300 in filament every couple of months.

Cool, ive been a bit unaware of other filament driers, as my food dehydrator has worked well enough for my purposes. Thanks for the heads up :slight_smile:

I found some containers that work for whole, individual spools that fit nice and are air tight i’m going to get as many as I can. Bonus they are made in Brampton and only a few bucks each

Oh? Do elaborate…

oh yeah, I had some cereal box rubber maid things I was using but I don’t like them very much. these will be much better for me.

They come from Great Canadian Dollar store.

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Thanks for pointing that out. I’ll have to have a look for them.