Brittle PLA filament

You mean these videos?

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Excellent, loved those, thanks!

If you watch them, it’s actually the opposite, being in or out of the tubing had no effect.

What the video shows is actually a few interesting things that many of us observed already without ever paying too much attention.

Filament, especially PLA as it seems, has a pre-defined structure, be it crystalline of through the polymer chains.
Water free PLA would be brittle as glass without modifiers.
Once on the roll, the PLA is set in stone so to say, only the additives ensuring a proper shelf life while the vacuum sealed bag limits oxidation and degradation.

It is still not fully clear what exactly causes PLA to age and degrade so differently for so many users.
Only things we know for sure so far:
Oxygen over time has a bad effect on fresh filament but very little on printed parts.
UV light is very bad while temperatures above 24 to 26 degrees seem to cause the filament to age faster.
A long list of chemicals that either soften (dissolve) PLA or make it brittle by affecting the additives and polymer chains.
What it basically still unclear is how exactly any of this makes our filament go bad.
I know of no manufacturer that ever provided any long term study on their stored filaments under various storage conditions …

Yes, it can get too dry and I do not believe its a moisture problem. I have stored some PLA in my dry cabinet that is under 5% humidity and PLA DOES get brittle. I think its just age.