Filament Dry Box

[cope413]

Hey guys, I got busy with honey-do stuff this weekend, so I wasn't able to post everything I was planning on, but I wanted to get this up.

I'll have more information coming soon, but here are the basics...

I've been printing with nylon (both trimmer line and taulman stuff) a lot lately (over 25lbs of the stuff in the past 2 months or so), and while it's by far my favorite material to print with for it's strength, flexibility, and the way it prints, it's an absolute pain in the rear to keep dry. And if it's not dry, it's virtually worthless to print with...

My buddy Dave and I have gone through a couple iterations of drying boxes... 5 gallon buckets, 15 gallon tubs, with light bulbs, without, with desiccant and without, then we started playing with acrylic boxes, and here we are.

The quick and dirty summary is that once dried, nylon has about 18 hours before it needs to be dried again if it's kept out in the open. That's obviously a huge pain to deal with, so we made this box.

Pretty straightforward - acrylic box, sealed and flame polished, with a sealing gasket on the lid. It uses gravity and the weight of your spool to seal. We printed small registers and mounted them on the corners so that it seats properly when you drop your spool in the box. Nylon straps with rubber grommets mounted in them keep the box closed and give you a carrying handle. There's a sealing connector on the side that you can print out of or close back up when not printing. A 2ft section of tubing prevents any noticeable change in the humidity levels while printing. It will print upright (as pictured) or on its side. It'll handle 1.75 or 3mm filament. We've been printing with 1.75mm for about a month and never had a single issue with feeding. We've also given a couple boxes to a local printing company, and they've been using them for a few weeks with great results. It'll handle virtually any spool out there - we've tried the ultimaker stuff, matter hackers, taulman, and radioshack spools. All the parts are printable, and we'll probably post those on thingiverse some time this week.

It has a rechargeable desiccant pack in it, and we've been monitoring our relative humidity levels (rh%) for quite a while now. We've gotten boxes down to single digits with heat and desiccants, but we've found that it's a bit unnecessary. Once dried properly, keeping it in the box in the 15-25 rh% range (which really just depends on your room temp) will keep the filament properly dry as there is not enough moisture in the volume of air in the box at those levels to negatively affect your filament. You can see that the box pictured is currently at 18% Rh.

We'd like to get some feedback before we go into any sort of production, so we are offering a few of these for sale at slightly above our cost for anyone interested. They don't come with the humidity/temp meter, but they do come with the desiccant and they come fully assembled.

$50+ shipping (which is $15 for USPS flat rate). If you're nearby Orange County, you could pick one up.

Consider these version 1.0, and we'd love to get feedback to improve them in any way we can, but they work well as-is, and are very simple - so that's a plus.

I plan to get some more pictures showing details, as well as some more technical information on different materials and the effect of moisture on printing, but it's a busy holiday season, so that may not happen until later this week.

Let me know if you have any questions, or if you'd like to buy one.

Cheers.

Taylor

[Eaglezsoar]

Do you have one that will handle the wider line trimmer spools? That is the one nylon that I intend to use the most of.

[cope413]

No, and we likely won't make one to fit it because it's a size that's really not used by the community. I do, however, have a part we made to easily respool that trimmer line with a drill. You can print one yourself. Just need a shoulder bolt to go with it.

Also, it's virtually impossible to dry the whole trimmer line spool without a vacuum oven. I would highly recommend you spool into 1-1.5lb amounts and dry. I tried 2-3 times - once drying at 180F for 24+ hours, but never could get the innermost parts of the line dry.

[Nylocke]

I'd love to get one, but currently I don't have $50 to spare would you be able to accept PayPal for payment? I might be able to make enough on MakeXYZ for one...

[Eaglezsoar]

No, and we likely won't make one to fit it because it's a size that's really not used by the community. I do, however, have a part we made to easily respool that trimmer line with a drill. You can print one yourself. Just need a shoulder bolt to go with it.

Also, it's virtually impossible to dry the whole trimmer line spool without a vacuum oven. I would highly recommend you spool into 1-1.5lb amounts and dry. I tried 2-3 times - once drying at 180F for 24+ hours, but never could get the innermost parts of the line dry.

Could you give me an idea what the respooling part looks like to give me an idea what to make? After I get the respooling done and it works okay, I will be buying the box but I want
to make sure that I can respool the big guys first.

[dpmacri]

Hmm...looks like a good thing to have once your filament is dry! I guess I'm going to have to make a box for drying my own filament first

[cope413]

This is the first one I made for using MatterHackers' spools. I have one for Taulman and for Ultimachine spools as well. Basically just a shoulder bolt in a little flange that locks into the spool and centers it. I grinded a small part of the threads off the bolt so that it seats well in the drill chuck.

I put the filament on one of these

Rostock_Spool_holder_-_Nylon.STL

(46.37 KiB) Downloaded 328 times

that's mounted in a bench vice.

Empty spool on the drill, and you've got a super easy respooling setup.

I can post the files for the parts later if you want them.

[Eaglezsoar]

Now it makes sense, I shouldn't need more files posted, I just needed the general approach to how you did it.
I can handle it now. Thanks, I'll give it a try in the next couple of days and then let you know about the box
you made. I hope you got my PM for the nozzles.

[Eric]

It occurs to me that for anyone who wants to roll-their-own version of whatever size, a cheap fish tank could make a great starting point for 5 of the 6 sides. Then all you need to construct is the top to seal it off (moving the feeder tube to the top instead of the side).

[BigJimmmy]

This is definitely relevant to my interests... I will find you in a few days after payday... Just bought my Max kit so the wallet is hurting this week...

[brent]

Looks interesting, might get this...

[seedjar]

Nice design. I was discouraged when I heard about nylon's humidity issues, as my house is full of plants and college students and mugginess. This is probably overkill, but have you considered using a peltier unit for active dehumidification within the enclosure? A peltier with a big heatsink and some Rain-X on a collector surface makes a fairly effective miniature condenser. It'd probably be less efficient than recharging/replacing dessicants, but not having to swap out dessicant packs might appeal to some people. By chance do you have any info on the ambient temperature/RH you've been testing it in?
Cheers,
~Joe

[MrPTrog]

What is the make and model of your RH meter? The one I bought reads to 20% and no lower.