@BambuBanker You tell me. Does Bambu filament have that kind of notch? It’s been so long since I’ve used Bambu filament that I no longer even remember.
No doubt you could re-spool any filament from any vendor onto it, or perhaps construct an adapter. However, I was looking for an easy drop-in solution, not more problems or additional things to do.
Yep it does, all Bambu filament besides those sold on cardboard spools have them. They don’t use a bolt though, they just have a little plastic notch on the spool that fits into it.
Maybe a metal spool could accelerate the drying process, if only because it would help to better conduct the heat to the center and side of the filament on the spool. That would be an interesting A-B trial to run.
Visually confirmed: the Creality “hubless” spools claim Bambu compatibility and also demonstrate the required notch:
I’m not wild about the cardboard core though.
What kind of core would you prefer?
Preferably nothing at all. At least in the past, Sunlu was like that:
It came with 3 velcro straps that held the held the filament spools shape. I’d slide it onto a master spool, unhook the velcro straps, and voilà!
At least in my experience, cardboard of any kind usually arrives holding moisture, so it slows down the drying process. As already mentioned above, in the worst case it can shed onto the filament, effectively polluting it while also increasing the risk of a jam.
Looks as though prices have dropped since the time CNC Kitchen last covered this topic. Here is the unit used in the youtube short directly above:
That is pretty cool, thanks for sharing.
I remember heat being an additional source for helping to actually get the moisture out of the filament, but if you dry it before using it, that shouldn’t be an issue.
And if you have it on top of the printer (like shown in the video) you would get some residual heat from the printer and might even help dry the filament in the AMS.
Still a very interesting topic.
This guy finishes off his filament drying by putting it in a vacuum chamber:
For convenience, I set the time index to where he talks about it. We had talked about this approach also, but I don’t think anyone here actually tried it and reported on it. Unfortunately, he doesn’t cite any evidence, but just the belief that it helps. He puts it in for 12 hours.
Overall I think he does a far better job than most youtubes at overviewing the different aspects of filament drying, keeping it dry while storing, and keeping it dry while printing.
Possibly the best youtube overview of the drying topic yet:
Very well photographed!
Lots of detailed information in table format.
He points out that silica gel doesn’t work all that well at 50C and above.
With regards to PPS-CF filament, I found that raising the drying temperature by even 10C can make quite a dramatic difference in the amount of extracted moisture:
https://forum.bambulab.com/t/my-first-time-printing-bambulab-pps-cf/168571/156?u=neverdie
Consistent with the temperature findings published by My Tech Fun in one of his youtube videos.
