I’ve been printing for 3 months now, and I’m starting to see the affects of wet filament. Everybody keeps saying to get a filament dryer… but which one? Which one evenly dries all of the filament, and has good ventilation? There are just so many out there, I can’t decide on one. What are your thoughts? Do you keep your filament in the dryer for a long time, or in a storage container? Please let me know if you have any suggestions for a filament dryer, I desperately need one.
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I have done a lot of testing with drying filaments, so heres my two cents, I have 3 AMS pro 2 and 1 AMS HT
Drying a filament works fine, if you dry it for long enough, a wet filament will take 20+ hours of drying, so don’t let it get wet in the first place.
Don’t leave spools open to the air, store them in a sealed something, bag, box, whatever, with plenty of silica gel in the enclosure,
If you want multi colour printing, and have a Bambu, go with an AMS, the AMS pro 2 is £30 more, so its worth going for AMS pro 2,
Try not to open the lid of the AMS at all, except when fitting new filaments lol, the idea of drying in an AMS is pretty much ineffective. Its better to print silica pods and store lots of rechargeable silica gel inside the AMS. I ran a test recently with drying versus silica gel only in an AMS, silica gel was about 99% effective as the drier. So silica gel pods are a really good idea, Plus if you are drying PETG at 65 degrees, you will somewhat dry your rechargeable gel at the same time. About once a month, but test this, take out the silica gel and recharge it, microwave, AMS HT, ovem etc
There’s more to it than just getting a dryer unfortunately. Your local humidity where you keep your filament is important too. Not everyone sees water issues in filament and you can tune out some effects to an extent. Since you are starting to see water issues, you have at least a minor issue to deal with.
There’s a fair bit to learn as you get into this. And it’s not just drying. It’s also storage. If you dry filament well and leave it sitting out it just goes right back to how it was before you dried it.
There’s multiple threads here on filament drying with lots of information.
A few other things though - putting filament in a dryer is more complex than people realize. Heating a spool starts encouraging water to leave but where does it go? The more basic dryers don’t do much to remove the evolved water. There’s lots of door props in MakerWorld for various dryers. What they do is let the water out and those help a lot.
But they only help so much and run out of steam as ambient humidity rises.
I have a basic Sunlu S2 filament dryer that I use. My procedure is to put the spool in and let it heat with the dryer door propped open a little. As the spool heats water starts coming off and the relative humidity in the dryer starts rising then will fall again. When it slows or stops dropping in the dryer I turn on a dry air purge that flushes out the humidity and lets the filament dry more. When relative humidity in the dryer drops to 19% I pull the filament. When it cools, if I put the spool in a poly container with a hygrometer, it pulls the relative humidity in the poly container to below 10% (where my hygrometers quit reading) and I don’t see water issues.
You may or may not need to do things like this to get good prints. Advantage is my spools dry in 8-10 hours and are as dry as I need them to get good prints. Works great on PLA, PETG, and ASA that I’ve tried but it should be effective with any filament type.
For storage I just have a collection of polyboxes that get a sachet of silica gel and sealed with a cheap hygrometer. The hygrometers let me keep tabs on storage filament. Only had a couple of leaky polyboxes but they do happen.
One thing to know about desiccants is silica gel is reversible. Don’t keep your silica gel dry and it can also act as a water reservoir to hydrate your filament. If using silica gel in things like an AMS or filament storage it’s important to keep an eye on the humidity and regenerate your silica gel when it gets too wet.
And don’t use the nice blue indicating silica gel. It uses a cobalt compound to show humidity levels and is considered hazardous waste, there’s dangers if pets or kids eat them, etc. The orange/green silica gel indicator is non-toxic.
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I am with @MZip.
You may wish to read my post on a similar subject which discusses drying.
Most of the cheap ones out there are garbage. No ventilation, and/or don’t reach drying temperatures.
Be carful not to over heat. It changes the properties of the filament. More akin to annealing than drying, if you over heat.
Some of the expensive dryers have automatic vents. If you have a manual vent, and leave it open when not drying It might undo the time spent drying. Many of the food dehydrators work well but suffer from venting when not drying.
Storage: I store mine in bags inside sealed boxes. With desiccant in each. It is amazing how often the desiccant gets saturated. Most things are not truly sealed. It just slows down. I store my hydroscopic filaments in Vacuum bags. You can tell what bags seal and what bags don’t hold a vacuum. Most of the time for me I find it is not the bag, but my sealing of the bag at fault.
How much you need drying depends on where you live. Probably more relevant is do you know what to look for as a symptom. And are you seeing the symptom. The symptoms are different for different materials
I am not a fan if drying while printing. It is effectively preheating the filament. How much time does it save if you have to reprint. I don’t know if the problem I had while testing, was caused by preheating. Do your own testing.
A false assumption is the new filaments are dry, if the bag has a vacuum. You can assume the filament is just as saturated as the desiccant. Do a simple test, Weigh-Dry-Weigh the desiccant. If the desiccant looses weight, it is probably water. Is more complicated than that, but simple test.
Don’t have enough experience with different dryers to recommend one. So I tried to describe the process to choose.
I really like the old Nesco American food dehydrators
These kind:
Search printables for your specific model, and print out risers so that each ring can hold a spool.
Compared to (at least the first gen of) filament dryers, they easily have 10x more airflow, are NOT designed to be a “sealed box” and let the humid air out, and have an adequately sized heating element to keep up with the amount of air they are shedding.
I think if you have an AMS1 you should think about the sunlu dryer box-top thing. It still has all the same weaknesses, but it at least allows you to be lazy!
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I’m also interested in this, do you think teh creality space pi x4 would be a good choice? I get humidity in the summer around 80% and in the winter it’s around 20%
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I unfortunately don’t know much about it to be able to recommend or not recommend it. But had a somewhat similar situation. I got my printer in the winter when our humidity is also very low. Printed everything great for about 3 months until the humidity started rising. That’s when the problems started.
I came from a much slower printer that was fine with open storage of filament though some would get brittle over time. The water issues with the Bambu were a total surprise to me but since then it’s been interesting to watch others discover the pleasure. Tends to happen around seasonal weather changes when humidities can spike and soon people notice water issues.
Key thing to watch for - “my printer has printed great for months but now…” or other things that point to humidity changes and filament storage that doesn’t keep water out.
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I’m looking to get my first 3D printer and initially I was thinking about the A1 Combo, but then I’ve learned more about the filaments and even PLA Basic filament suggests drying before using it - obviously if you use the AMS lite to hold your filament spools then it’s out in the open and I could be wrong here but I doubt very much if you can tell how much moisture is in a filament just by looking at it.
So now I think I’m going to go for the P2S Combo as this includes the AMS 2 Pro which can dry your filament and store it.
Would this be a sensible way of looking at things or have I got it all wrong?
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Just speaking to the AMS and protecting from moisture: There are some mods you can print/install to enclose the AMS lite’s spools, change it’s body shape, mounting location, etc. Not super ideal, and I wouldn’t rely on it for like PVA or other insane-hygroscopic stuff, but it’s alright.
In any case, If you live in a mid to low humidity environment AND use mostly PLA, AMS lite’s spools hanging out dont cause too much issue. If you unwrap a roll, dry it, then rack it on the AMS lite, my anecdotal experience is that you wont have moisture problems for a month+, if at all.
The heated AMS is a [hefty] convenience factor, and does sound nice to use.
For what it’s worth, I have a CR Space Pi 2. It’s okay. It can hit higher temps, as I discovered when I managed to soften its own internal vents. It maintains a temp acceptably but not a consistent temp through the chamber, it’s 10° cooler at the top than where the hot air blows in. It sometimes overshoots the target temp by 5° before settling in at a fixed temp.
The Pi 4 seems to have some improvements. Do a search for it here and on Reddit for some experiences with it.
Seems sensible to me. I had a similar line of thought this past summer and got the P1S combo with the AMS 2 instead of the A1. No regrets.
There have been a bunch of posts by people having trouble with the new P2S. It’s too early to say whether there are widespread issues or if we are just seeing a loud minority who got lemons. It does happen.
If you live in the US it’s a moot point. Orange Daddy has decided to use tariffs to look tough no matter who it hurts, so we can’t get new products like the newest printers.
Indeed. It would most likely take around 10 to 12 months to determine whether the inherent new machine launch issues (tech and s/f) have been adequately tackled by Bambu, though I think (from past launches) that only the s/f will be tackled, while the hardware part will be dealt with only if a similar situation like with the A1 will occur (replacements, recalls). We will have to wait and see. Personally, I usually stay back and wait for 10 to 12 months before buying, just to give it enough time to both rushing users to discover whatever issues there might be, and Bambu to try solve them. If after 10-12 months users are satisfied and content, then i make my own decision, based on what the other new machjnes Bambu’s competitors have brought to the table.
Indeed. To many of us, outside the US, it looks like he’s shooting his own foot.
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^ A very rational approach.
His foot is fine. Those of us who didn’t inherit wealth and must work for our living, on the other hand…
Anyway, I’m okay with my Creality Space Pi 2, but if I were in the market again, I’d look for a Ninja AF100, based on others’ experience here. Good temperature regulation, does low temps as well as high, can be double-purposed for annealing, and can make you lunch. 
By “his own foot” I meant the average American citizen.
Funny thing, I was considering the same model for a filament dryer, to replace my Sovol 2.
How do you like the Sokol 2 dryer? Would you recommend it? Likes, dislikes?
It’s Sovol 2 dual filament dryer (see product image below), and as many have pointed out, though it does work and deliver what’s supposed to do, I had to make some changes and adjustments to it, to allow for the humidity to be removed not just circulated through hot air. For the price I’ve paid for it, and with the improvements I’ve made to it it’s quite okay. However, I’d rather want something that allows more control over how i dry my filament, and the AF 100 dehydrator is one of the 3 dehydrator models I would be interested in purchasing.
What change did you make to the Sokol dryer. It’s one of the 3 I’m considering
The sovol dryer is fine. It’s cheap and does the trick. I’ve been using one for years. Just prop the door open with the clasps when in use to allow the humidity to escape.
I still can’t believe he got voted in, in the first place yet alone twice. I bet everyday folks can’t wait to be rid of him. Anyway, orange man rant over - thanks for replying - interesting to know about issues with P2S, I’d only gone on YouTube videos of it so far - as it’s a new printer I guess there will be some issues to iron out with firmware most likely before everything runs smoothly?
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So would you reckoned getting it? I print PETG, and ABS.