I would buy your first filament orders with spools until you have used up 4-5 spools. This will give you a buffer of empty spools as once you load a refill on to a spool it isn’t advisable to remove the spool. Normally you won’t print a full spool in a print and so if you want to print another colour with a refill, you won’t have a spool to load it on.
You can print your own spool halves but honestly it’s cheaper and easier to buy filament with spools until you have some spares.
Ah what a quick answer thank you.
Well Im only gonna print 1 thing and a lot of it thats why im asking, was thinking of taking 1 white PTEG and 1 black PTEG with spool and the rest just refills in bulk. (do you think that is alright?)
PS could I just remove the PLA spool Im gonna get with the printer and put PTEG in it?
PSPS I now also see that I need to dry the PTEG and the internet says to put it in the owen fot 5h on 50-60 degrees. (do you know is that save and really necessary)
Sry for the questions but would help a lot in the purchase, ty!
If you are only printing one part in a single colour you can probably get away with less spools. When I first started I tried to limit the number of spools I bought and use refills. Looking back it was really more of a hassle and I had wished I had just bought more filament with spools at the start. The extra couple buck per spools would have made my workflow easier and I didn’t have to spend time/filament printing my own subpar spools.
I will warn you that once you have a printer, your options really open up and you will end up printing other items and using different materials. It really is a game changer. I would also suggest you look at getting the AMS for the sole reason you can load it with filament and it will auto refill ie move to the next spool when a spool runs out. This is really really helpful when you are printing a BUNCH of one part.
PETG - yes I would dry it in a quality filament drier or by using your printer to dry them. I would not suggest trying to dry them in your oven as it is easy to melt spools that way.
Nobody will be able to give you meaningful advice on how many spools vs refills to get because we don’t know how you will use it. But since you can print spools, if you get caught out you can always print one. I really prefer the factory spools, myself especially when drying because your printed spools are only good to the softening temperature of the filament you use. The factory spools have their max temps printed on them.
Drying is a can of worms. Depending on your ambient humidity it can even add water if the filament is already dry and the humidity is high. Putting a spool in an oven for an amount of time can dry filament though if humidity is low. If you have issues with water in your filament and printing defects because of it, you could be looking at learning more than you want about it.
But I really can’t recommend drying filaments in any oven used for food. Plastics outgas all sorts of things that can stick to your oven walls and come back off at higher temps while cooking.
Ah thank you very much, and what about if I just leave it in the sun for a few days? It can be very hot here like 40+ degrees…
PS I want to print myself 20ish hydroponic vertical towers and after looking around people talk that PTEG is better because dosnet suffer from UV and water over time… That true?
The Bambu PETG-HF mentions UV resistance and great for outdoor use so you may be fine.
About drying, it’s complicated. It’s not just temperature but also ambient humidity that sets how much water you can remove how fast from a filament spool. I’ve been digging deep into drying and there’s a thread on filament drying preliminary results here that goes into too much detail over what has been found but I haven’t tried PETG-HF yet (two spools on the way to try it though) so don’t yet know how well it works. Only dried PLA so far - it works great for PLA - but it’s apparently less hygroscopic.
Lots of discussions about drying here but keep in mind about ambient humidity effects on drying with standard dryers. Most only mention temperature and time but that isn’t enough. The best evaluations of drying results will include drying temperature, time, the relative humidity they dried to, the ambient humidity of the environment they dried in, and weight loss determined with a good scale.
I would strongly advise against the sun for drying. You really need the temperature control over several hours. If temperature rises too high for just a short time, the entire spool will be ruined. If temperatures are too low, it doesn’t dry.
If you don’t want to spend extra money, the drying feature in your printer is a great option. You just need a box that you can put over the spool.
If you don’t want your printer to be blocked by the drying, then my first choice would be a food dehydrator like this one https://amzn.eu/d/9oOvvVA, second choice would be one of the dedicated filament dryers.
Nope - it’s built in. Never done it but I’ve seen mention how they use a filament box to dry in and just put the box on the build plate but double check the actual instructions. My personal advice would be not to do it on a humid day though.