I read a thread here a few days ago about poor print quality and people were debating on the necessity of drying new filaments. I wanted to post this there but i could not find it. So here it is.
I ordered two dozens of Creality Hyper PLA and PETG as i will start printing several big build projects. They arrived yesterday. I wanted to perform filament calibration before starting to print.
This morning i put two of the black PLAs in the dryer hoping to be able to calibrate after 4 hours. Started with 40C but immediately i felt the urge to raise it to 50C (max SOVOL 02 can reach). The initial humidify jumped to 62% in 30 minutes. They are in dryer at 50 C for the last 6 hour and i need to open the lid and dry the water vapor every half hour. This is the worse i have seen from a brand new filament. I think it is because of the cardboard spool. See the photos. They sweat like a pig.
This also triggered a philosophical question in my brain? Do cardboard spools really eco friendly?
-Wet filament= more failed prints= more plastic waste.
-Wet filaments need more dryer time= more energy waste.
Tearing out the carboard sides would decrease the drying requirements but this is the first time i am using Creality HS and i am not sure if i can fit them back in BL reusuable spools that came with my P1S.
For me they are more eco friendly, because we have
good paper recycling, the spools would be repurposed for new paper (~85% recycling quote)
and questionable plastic recycling (~35% seems to be reused for new plastics). The plastic spools themselves don’t have the identifier symbol on it, so they might not be recycled at all:
Eco-friendlyness is more than just how much energy is used. Especially with trash, I am more concerned about recycling than potential energy use. In my case, there even exist dedicated companies that take PLA/PETG scraps and make new filament from it (recyclingfabrik).
The paper spools work both ways. Once you dry the filament and the cardboard spool, the cardboard will act like a desiccant and provide another place for water to go and protect the filament to a degree.
People just need to recognize that cardboard spools can carry some extra water. Even filament on plastic spools can arrive with enough water to cause print issues.
There is no doubt the efficiency of recycling paper. What i think is many user will end up with more failed prints which will end up as plastic waste. This can easily be more than the plastic spool by weight.
Also we should be concern about the energy too. As Many countries agreed to move out from fossil fuels and unsustainable energy sources, the demand for electricity increased. Many countries are not able to produce enough to fulfill that demand. The electricity prices started to increase all around the world.
One of the proposed alternative to petrol is ethanol, Which is mainly produced by fermenting rice, wheat etc. With the increasing population should we feed our ppl or our car.
As i mentioned it is a philosophical question after all. Time will tell.
Users already end up with lots of failed prints and plastic waste from filament with high moisture content - either straight from the factory or their own doing with storage that lets filament soak up water from the air.
Your point about energy is a good one. The answer is to dry the filament until it prints well and no more. That translates to drying to target filament dryer chamber humidities instead of the blind x hours at y temperature which doesn’t work anyway for people in high humidity areas.
I wrote in another post. The new users, especially buying “plug and go” technologies like BL have no clue about anything. They are much more prone to failures. If the plastic spools have risk of failure due to moisture, think how much this risk will increase with a spool already 65% wet out of the box.
Well, first that 65% number is a bit over the top. It’s important to remember that the cardboard and filament have seen the exact same humidity in the shipping bag because it’s a closed system.
Water contents may be different, however, because filament and cardboard more than likely have different affinities for water.
Regardless, I agree that newbies think everything should just work and are stumped when all they can print are tangled messes. Manufacturers don’t help anything by fudging a bit on drying instructions that don’t complicate filament drying but also are inadequate for users who don’t have their industrial ovens.
The reality is filament drying is crucial for some but doesn’t matter at all for others depending on how they handle and store filament and the ambient humidity. Explain that to people who don’t understand humidity and it turns into a mess. Ask me how I know.
Filament moisture is a complex topic and manufacturers oversimplify it. It’s compounded by hygroscopic filaments that are susceptible to water issues.
This is an issue filament and printer manufacturers created by not properly explaining the issues and not socializing proper filament handling for high performance printers that are subject to moisture issues.
That was what the sensor read when i first placed them. Shipping from China with airmail takes about a month, most of the boxes I received from Aliexpress are damaged and wet. I do not think, this was not the case for these filaments. Boxes felt moist but the bags’ seals were intact and properly vacuumed. The moisture had to be introduced in the factory before sealing the bags. Maybe they packed them during Muson season.
You’re talking about the sensor in your filament dryer, aren’t you? If so, that’s a special case because heat starts driving water off the filament and that causes the humidity to spike. That’s different than sealing the spool in a bag or poly box and reading that humidity after the number settles - about 10-12 hours. That number will be related to moisture content. The number you hit as the spool heats has other things wrapped up in it that can affect how high that number goes.
Different water contents in individual spools will cause spiking to different levels as spools heat but there’s lots wrapped up in that. You can make loose comparisons between how high they spike but different dryer temperatures and when you check will affect results.
But the humidity it hits on heating isn’t really a good measure of moisture content - though is an indication - because it’s a system that isn’t stable. Things are changing so how you make that measurement gets important to be able to compare with others.
Moisture may or may not enter through the shipping bag. You may have noticed some filament comes in opaque silver bags and some is in clear plastic. The silver is usually a metalized layer that helps control water. The clear bags obviously don’t have that but may have other protections including the desiccant packs they use to scavenge water. At any rate, it’s hard to know where filament picks up water but it is either with the filament when bagged or it picks it up on the way.
With some of the high moisture contents people see, it also wouldn’t surprise me if those silica packs are mishandled and left out day to day allowing them to pick up water. I don’t expect many factory workers to understand the nuances of silica gel soaking up water like a sponge when sitting out. If they don’t keep their silica gel dry, they can be hydrating it by throwing those packs in with filament before sealing.
Cellulose fiber, whether cardboard, or copier paper is a water magnet.
If you want to guess how absorbent it is, they make the absorbant for adult diapers such as Depends, Pampers, feminine hygiene pads and tampons out of cellulose fiber.
Not arguing that point at all. Of course it is. However, much depends on how the filament manufacturers handle it before and after spooling. It’s really not much different than how they handle desiccant packs. If they do it right there’s little problem and all you’re going to see mostly will be any water that permeates through the wall of the bag.
If they do it wrong then you have a water source in the bag to help hydrate your filament and provide extra water load when drying.
But whatever happens, in the bag it’s essentially a closed system aside from possible water permeability which presumably is low. During shipping and storage that water will equilibrate with the desiccant and filament to distibute the water across everything in the bag according to how strongly it attracts water at that equilibrated humidity.
Just an update,
I dried the black ones until the sensor stabilized at 10%. Before i put them in to AMS, sensor in AMS was at 8% for days. After putting them in it increased to 14%.
After drying them i performed filament calibrations. Everything was OK. The maximum volumetric flow given by Creality was 23. In the calibration print everything looked fine around 26.5. A set it to 22. My first parts will take 18 hours to print and i did not want to risk failure while i am sleeping.
Today i open two grey spools from the same batch. The spool did not felt cold or moist like the black ones. When i put them in the dryer sensor read 43% and now it reads 8%.
There was something wrong with the black ones that’s for sure.
I posted this on Reddit as well. Today Eibos3d (as far as i know, they are a kick starter filament dryer company) posted a reply to me. I will attach the screenshot of the post. The first paragraph is rather interesting. I did not know that. The last part is, i assume a marketing move, rubbishing my dryer and implying theirs are better.
I have the Eibos Easdry. I never see the humidity rise. It starts at ambient humidity and only drops, down to the 10% lower limit of the meter. I never have condensation forming inside the dryer. Outside air is pulled in, heated (reducing its humidity) circulated around the spool to absorb moisture, and expelled. Circulating moist air inside the dryer does nothing to remove moisture, which is the whole objective. The moisture needs somewhere else to go and a way to get there.
As someone who worked in the paper industry for 30+ years, that is not entirely correct. Pulp makes the product soft and comfortable to wear in addition to it’s water absorbency. What is fluff pulp used for?
If you have ever opened a fresh, packaged ream of paper, you will notice that an individual sheet is crisp and if you crumple it you can feel that crisp, crinkly aspect.
Leave that sheet of paper out for a few hours and then crumple. Full of water, that crispness is gone.
In the instructions, Sovol recommends leaving the lid opened a crack while drying to let the moisture out. That may help with the condensation the next time you get a very wet roll.
