My new filament dryer

I have been vacillating about purchasing a dryer or making one or even just using the oven. Living in Arizona you would not think that you would need a dryer but the filament will get brittle and break which does not make for great prints. I had seen the dryer below and put it in my Amazon wish list. Last week the price dropped $10.00 to $35.00. I have used it on one PLA roll so far and it defiantly came back from the dead. After being treated, I could tie the filament into a knot. Before, I could snap it into 1/4" pieces. I am going to modify the box so that the spool is slowly rotated during drying. I will update that when I “get around to it!”

5 Likes

That’s probably smarter than my taped together box made from insulation, with an old 3D printer bed in it to supply heat, powered by an old 24V power supply and controlled by an old 3D printer control board!

How hot does this one heat the filament?

There is a picture on the review showing 59.6 C with a temp gun.
There are 3 temp ranges but the info is a bit ambiguous on what the actual temps are.
The timer will go up to 18 hours in 0.5 increments.

1 Like

back to $45 but it’s in the wish list. thx

1 Like

I can second the recommendation for this dryer. With it I’ve had good success recovering water-logged filament.

3 Likes

Yup, got it in the cart… Santa Cl_amazon is coming to town…

1 Like

This appears to be the same thing, different brand, same $40 deal as a lightning deal.

Edit: Sunlu have since spammed Maker Forums, and I therefore recommend against buying their products. This is clearly a generic unit that many other vendors sell, so no particular reason to buy from a spammer

2 Likes

It does look similar but the big deal about the one I was able to get is it does have an internal fan which helps with circulating the warm air and removing moisture from the box. Not sure this has that.

If you research these boxes you will find that adding a fan was one of the options to improve its function and later ones did have them built in.

2 Likes

$10 more if you want a fan… https://www.amazon.com/upgraded-filament-sunlu-filaments-compatible/dp/b08c9rzpmn

2 Likes

Turns out the one I linked to had a fan. Or at least the one that arrived at my house today definitely has a fan.

3 Likes

Did you get it for $39, it’s $49 now.

Yup. It was a “lightning deal” — but that might be a harbinger of an even better black friday special coming, I suppose.

3 Likes

Glad to hear you scored a good deal!

You got the even better deal though. :smiley:

Given that Sunlu sell it direct normally for $40, I’ll be surprised if there isn’t another better deal during black friday sales.

The user interface is primitive at best. On the Amazon page, I see this:

Fixed it for them:

To make things easier for us, we only designed two buttons for the dry box and didn’t bother to put any labels on the buttons or even put instructions on how to use the buttons into the package.

The useless pictographs that ship with the unit don’t actually explain how to use it. There’s a QR code for the full manual, which is a 103MB PDF of… the useless pictographs that ship with the unit. Argh.

Sunlu’s product page says:

Click right bottom [sic] to set heating temp; Press the left bottom [sic] for 3 seconds to set heating time. (PV means the actual heating temp in the dryer box; SV means the temp you set)

The only way to turn it off is to set it to zero hours and wait an indeterminate amount of time, or to unplug it and plug it back in.

3 Likes

Love thing where is says “To make things easier…” when they really mean “cheaper”. :grin:

2 Likes
2 Likes

The one I’m currently eyeing is the Easdry by Eibos. It got a fan, goes up to 65°C (45W), and got a stupid-simple single-knob interface. You just turn the dial to “PETG” or whatever. That’s it. It does pretty well in the comparisons. You can get it for as little as $50 if you get a good deal.

The only caveat is that spools have to be smaller than 220x72mm and that the hole has to be larger than 50mm. This isn’t a problem with the brands I’m using.

It’s also the ugliest dryer I’ve ever seen, but since it would sit next to an ugly printer, it really doesn’t matter in my opinion.

3 Likes

I bought the Sunlu dryer, Being that it’s my first, I’d say it’ll do. But I do understand that quality has a price, and obviously it’s more than we paid for this. It has all the features I was looking for though… It heats/dries filament and it does have good rollers at the bottom. Sure the instructions aren’t any good, or clear, or understandable. but I figured it out in about five minutes. Put a guide and Bowden tube fitting on it and it can direct load through my enclosure, to my printer… But then I would be tube locked, and I don’t want that.
I was looking at another dryer for twice the price, it had all the features I wanted too, It dries filament…

2 Likes

I just received the Sunlu w/fan model for $37 and will be cutting a hole in it and wiring a red rocker on/off switch on it. The settings default to 50C and 6h so will try that as the default and see how it goes.

2 Likes

Since I brought up the Sunlu unit in this thread, I wanted to warn folks that now Sunlu have started to spam Maker Forums. This is clearly a generic unit that multiple vendors sell with their own branding, so my recommendation would be to find one of the other vendors.

I guess if they will stoop to SEO spam in community forums, it’s not a great surprise that they would also be attempting to influence reviews. Here’s another reason to avoid Sunlu products:

2 Likes