Even if the article was created to find other opinions, the inaccurate opinion of a title is what one might call click-bait. My opinion is : if you are an environmentalist who hates 3d printing then yes the title is true, and if you are an avid 3d printer enthusiasts who has years of experience 95% using PETG (me) you think the title of this article is a joke.
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People can say whatever they want to say, but based on my experience there is absolutely zero question that drying petg makes a huge difference. I have not had the same experience with PLA, but if I donât dry petg, I get a bad print. I dry the filament and run the same gcode and get a good print. It has happened countless times. Thereâs no doubt some people in drier climates will have a different experience (I live in the Pacific Northwest where thereâs 99% humidity pretty regularly) and maybe there are other variables as well. Maybe there are even settings that can be tweaked to somewhat compensate for the problem, but saying it doesnât exist is ludicrous.
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I donât keep track of every spool I dry and if I do measure it I donât keep the results any longer than I need them.
Your filament may have a value in the TDS for how much moisture it absorbs in certain conditions. For an extreme example PA6-CF from bambu absorbs 2.35 % and according to their product page that results in a huge loss of mechanical properties and also means it really wonât print well and prints will likely fail or be very weak. Bambu PETG claims to only absorb 0.32 % but for your filament you would have to see what the TDS says, if it has one, which is an advantage of buying filament from decent sources.
I only dry if the filament needs it, so if the quality decreases, it strings more of if I can hear pops from the nozzle. Most of the time if the filament is too wet you will hear the pops.
How wet a filament gets and how well it prints both depend on lots of things, mainly how hygroscopic the material is, as mentioned before nylon is very hygroscopic. PETG and PLA shouldnât be very hygroscopic but I have had issues with both that were solved by drying.
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It definitely is not for me. I quit 3d printing for two years because in 2019 I bought some amazon petg and could never get it to print right. After drying it for a bit, it started printing perfectly on my old ender 3.
As @skyme I live in germany with nearly the same climate conditions (humidity between 68 and 86% over the year). And my printer and my filament is also located in the basement at temperatures between 15 and 20°C and a relative humidity between 55 and 85%. I stored my filament on the table near by the printer and have never thought about drying PETG, because the parts I printed were mostly functional parts and the quality was okay. But after I got my AMS I tried to print some dry boxes and had a lot o stringing. So I tested drying with the simple retraction test and it was⊠wow⊠The left object was printed before drying and the right one after printing.
With the dried PETG the dry boxes for the AMS were printed in a much better quality. Since this time, I dry new filament and store it in dry boxes. A few weeks ago, I had some rest of a PETG role (less than 5 meters) laying around on the table for some weeks. I used it for a wall thickness test, but it looked strange (right object). After drying, it was perfectly again (left object).
This confirms that I should at least dry PETG before using it for the first time and then store it in a dry box. Many posts here in the forum confirm this. But as some users wrote, everyone has to decide for themselves how to handle this. 
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Thank you - especially for the fotos.
I think they are a good proof that keeping PETG dry can improve printing quality.
I also keep my filament in boxes with silicate but on top dry PETG only if the first print has stringing or other artefacts .
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Thank you for the good example! If I ever had a print like the right one on the picture, I surely would consider drying.
Could you share which filament brand the red filament is?
Average outside humidity of your town is not relevant indicator. In the winter, inside you have lower humidity due to heating. In the summer it can be the same if you have AC.
I think that biggest contributor is the printer itself. With Prusa mini, I got always terrible sttringing if PETG wasnât sufficiently dried. With Prusa MK3 it was better. With X1C I didnât see stringing with obviously wet filament.
Not sure, but I think that this might be related to printing speed. With faster printing speed, there is less time for wet filament to affect quality.
@skyme, both examples are SUNLU PETG bought from Amazon in a package with 3 rolls (red, white & black) at my beginning of printing with PETG.
@yorkloew, I dry the filament also only if itâs wet. If I open a new role of filament (my main brand is extrudr filament) I don not dry it. I use it and then store it in my dry boxes. I dry it only, if the print shows the same failures like in the photos above. Or sometimes I get unsealed filament very cheap and this I dry always 24h before usage, because I donât know how it was stored.
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The first thing I do with any kind of filament I buy is dry it until it stops losing weight and then vacuum seal it with dessicant.
Then I know my plastic is in the best printing and structural position it can be and wet filament is never a potential variable when troubleshooting.
I donât understand the sentiment from some people that look at drying as a nuisance or chore. Most of the work is done by the dryer. I even go the extra step of weighing it before and one or more times after and it is such a minor thing that I donât get why it is a big deal.
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EntiĂšrement ok avec toi. Jâimprime egalement beaucoup de PETG. Je conserve le filapent dans des sacs hermĂ©tiques avec z2 ou 3 petits sachets de silicate. Jamais eu de problĂšme.
Bonjour. Jâai une question quinâa rien a voir avec le sujet mais jâai un gros problĂšme. Je peux rĂ©pondre aux sujets, mais jene peux pas en crĂ©er. Pas de bouton ânouveau sujetâ, commentfait on pour poser une question sur ce forum ? Merci
You just need to keep reading for a bit. JonRaymond posted a quick guide on levelling up. Just search for that and read for ~10Min or so and you should be promoted.
Here:
This really needs to be a âstickyâ post at the very top of the Site Feedback forum, and included in the email verification sent to the user bwhen signing up.
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Merci. Pour moi, ce nâest pas simple. Ce site est en anglai et comme tous les français, je suis nul dans cette langue⊠
Donc, jenâai pas vu cette astuce.
Encire merci pour votre réponse rapide.
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@print.in.3d : I once had a spool of black sunlu petg. At the time, I was totally surprised that it printed best at temperatures of around 190°C, which is more in favor of PLA. Unfortunately, the finished component couldnât withstand high temperatures either and melted the first time it was used on the dashboard of my car. I used up the roll and never bought sunlu again because of this.
Like you, I mainly use extrudr and have never had any problems. Have you ever had to dry extrudr filament?
I canât really answer this question. If I buy the filament from extrudr directly, I use it undried but store it in a dry box after opening the role. But sometimes I buy extrudr filament from a dealer who sells production remnants with minor defects. Because I donât know, how it is stored, I dry it 24h before usage.
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Danke fĂŒr die anschauliche Arbeit und deren Beschreibung mit Bildern!
Solange der Druck noch funktioniert und nicht scheitert, wird es einige User nicht interessieren, wie gut das Ergebnis wirklich ist, solange sie nicht fĂŒr Kunden drucken, die dafĂŒr bezahlen und durchaus gute von schlechteren Drucken unterscheiden können (wenigstens manche).
How did you come to this conclusion? Print speed shouldnât really affect it. The water causes bubbles and pops when it comes out of the nozzle, printing faster doesnât change that since the filament needs to be heated to a temperature much hotter than the boiling point of water. The individual pops and bubbles are extremely fast anyway, itâs not like it slowly boils out.
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I never dried my filament, lived in So Cal. PETG/TPU/TPE. Never had an issue. Moved to AZ and continued for 2 to 3 years not drying, no problems. Even through monsoon season. This is in a production environment by the way. Close tolerance parts being run 24/7.
Then I began having weird issues, not on every printer at the same time but same issues. CFPETG finish was rough, more matte, and brittle. Both CFPETG and TPU tolerances began to move out of spec. Chased down the usual suspects. Temp towers and calibration cubes, hotend components changed, verified hot end temps with calibrated thermocouples I use in composites. Contacted manufacturer to check if they changed their recipe. Nope they didnât. But their first question was 'do you dry your filament?
No, never have had to. $%^&* OOOPS! And what do you know dried filament solved the issue.
Maybe I should have started with the simplest variable to check. It would have saved me countless hours, countless scrapped parts, and a whole lot of R&D time Iâd never get back.
So, in a long winded way I am saying âasking if a person has dried their filamentâ when they are asking for help with an issue is a solid suggestion. It is not always the cause but as evidenced in my experience it is one of the easiest fixes to try.
All my filament gets dried, stored in dry boxes with dessicant, and feeds from a dry box. If you are looking for imperial evidence backed by data look around. Tons of white papers on the hygroscopic nature of plastics. Both thermoplastic and thermosets. If youâre not an engineer or a chemist itâll give you a head ache, just read the conclusions at the end. Results are⊠Plastics absorb moisture!
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