Originally shared by TeamDogoman Rc
Hi everyone! I wanted to ask if any of you now any other way to dry filament than an oven. I just bought a roll of alloy 910 nylon and i can’t use it. Due to the fact that i have a swamp cooler not an AC, my first prints with the stuff came out terrible. They where filled with tons of air pockets and where very weak, and completely useless. I had heard that you can bake the filament for a few hours in the oven to get it to dry out, but theres no way on earth ill be allowed to but that stuff in my oven. Is there any other way to dry it out?
Here’s how i dry my filament: https://youtu.be/N4pjAXjpQTg
I had the same issues. Once you get it dry and get the 910 dialed in you’ll love it. I use a 5 gallon bucket with lid, 40 or 60 watt light bulb on a timer 12 hrs on, 12 hours off, and a 1 inch layer of kitty layer (silica crystal type) on the bottom. I didn’t put holes in it like the taulman site recommended as I also live in a humid location and wanted to keep humid air from entering when the bulb was off. Measured temp in the bucket got up to about 110F max. In your case you might want to run the light bulb 24 hours a day for a few days to get it dry, then 12/12 on/off to maintain the dryness.
In addition to drying it, you’re also going to want to make a drybox. A polypropylene Rubbermaid type tub with gasket seal is great, and you can take a spare Bowden fitting and run it straight through the box to a PTFE tubing run to your extruder. Then put some damp-rid in there to suck up any residual moisture
@Ryan_Carlyle yah I’ll definitely want to do that.
@Nick_Pagazani my question is how much electricity would that use?
Yeah, good question! So it should look like this for a 60 watt bulb: 0.06kw12hrs365days=262.8kWh. In the US the average electricity price is about 11 or 12 cents per kWh. This will vary depending on where you live, but lets us 12c, so that’s 262.8*0.12 = $31.54 per year. Thats about the price of a 1lb spool of 910. Electricity is about a third of that where I live so it’s much cheaper. Also, since the bucket I use has a lid that seals pretty well I just store my material in the same bucket. In reality I can probably reduce the “on” time of the bulb down by a few hours and it should be more than enough to maintain the low humidity in the bucket if I’m not opening it that often. Compared to the energy used by the printer itself, the bulb is actually much less. Though you’re probably not running your printer 12 hours a day, I would think it still uses an order of magnitude greater than the bulb. Anyone have stats on how much your typical printer running a heated bed uses?
@Nick_Pagazani ok thanks a lot ! My electric is not nearly as much as most people so I shouldn’t have a problem.
