Filament storage, a superior method?

[MZip]

@Rychard

I have a a dozen or more unopened boxes/bags of filament that have been around for several months. All seem to be vacuumed still.

Unfortunately that doesn’t guarantee anything. Water vapor still leaks in and gets absorbed by filament (and desiccant).

New filament in what looks like vacuumed bags can have any moisture content and be fine or too wet to print well.

The clear plastic bags are semi-permeable to water. To get better protection from water infiltration takes metallized coatings or other more expensive kinds of bags.

[MZip]

@Olias

However, I have also found that a moisture indicator card is a good gauge for determining “moisture over time”. Let’s face it, what the conditions inside the back at any moment is helpful but what we really want to know is how much humidity was present over time. For filament, that is more important.

But you also say these cards are reversible and show the current humidity the filament is exposed to. It can’t be both.

The cards are reversible and really provide the same information as a hygrometer. The advantage with cards is no batteries. Some of the batteries in my storage hygrometers are so low now it’s hard to read the humidity values.

So really equivalent information but the real utility IMO is in storage they keep working. I prefer the finer resolution of hygrometers but no batteries is the big one for me.

Actually, if you want to know the integrated humidity a spool has been exposed to you can. Without desiccant, the humidity test will tell you indirectly what the moisture content is in the spool. Just test the spool itself.