Setting aside your ironically overthought GPT generated philosophical take on filament drying, let’s talk about actual needs, not hypotheticals wrapped in smug efficiency talk. You print for fun. You admitted it. You probably even shut your machines down at night, light a candle, and whisper sweet nothings to your filament. Cool story. Meanwhile, on my end, I go through 20+ rolls every couple of days. Not weeks…days. When one spool finishes, the next one’s already up. No downtime, no breaks, no romanticizing storage conditions. This isn’t a print room, it’s a production environment.
You’re wondering why four S4s run fulltime? Because they have to. Every roll that comes in lately is wet. Factoryfresh and useless unless prepped properly. And it’s not just PLA we’re talking about. Half of these are TPU 85A or lower. Anyone actually printing TPU at scale knows you don’t want “kinda dry.” You want bone dry, or you’re wasting time, material, and quality.
And unlike your AMS daycare setup, I don’t have time to play musical chairs with moisture levels. The dryers run because the machines run. And those machines haven’t been off since they came out of the box. Same with my PC. If there’s no power outage, they’re on. Period. Been doing this for over a decade, not a couple of months on a dopamine kick.
So no, this isn’t overengineering. It’s called being prepared. Having redundancy. Ensuring quality. When you’re running serious uptime, you don’t wait for filament to become a problem…you stay ahead of it.
You want to talk economics? Let’s. Because while you’re crunching ROI formulas on imaginary overkill, I’m fulfilling real orders with zero delays, zero downtime, and zero failed prints due to “just store it in a dry box” optimism.
So no, this isn’t a filament rehab center. This is a print shop that doesn’t stop.
And since you mentioned ROI ill give you a slice of the cake. I bought 2 of the sunlus for 60 so x2 is 120, plus 110x2 for the first 2 units, its 360 total. My average return from each order is over 500, with the goods in the 1000s. Yes I think ill be fine with the equipment I need and own.
Αnd lastly? why would you actually worry about the economic conditions or wether thats gonna be added to the cost of the part? OFCOURSE its gonna be added to the cost of the part, this is a business not a bedroom with a printer that makes a phone stand for a friend. Everything costs, from my time, to analysing and designing what the client needs, testing, experimenting, prepping, EVERYTHING adds up. But the plot twist is that I dont print pokeballs to need to compete with 15 year olds with A1minis selling them for 2 euros.
If i was worried about noise, heat and cost of operation, i wouldnt have chosen to build a business with additive manufacturing, I would be making lemonade on the sidewalk with a hand-squeezer. And if you think THIS is hot and noisy, I should have brought you into my previous job as a chef…
And as a side note, what exactly are you drying at 300C? Aluminum?