I think your guidance is on the right track, actually.
So when I first dried the filament, I dried it maybe 6 hours or 8 hours and then stuck it in a desiccant filled cereal container with a sealed lid. I had mistakenly assumed it was dried from the factory, and that the container would continue to dry it fine. Even though it was there for many days, apparently at room temp that’s just not going to cut it with PA6-CF.
So this a.m. I started drying it in the S2, and now that it’s been 12 hours, I decided to try a print again to see how it looked. The first maybe 2-4 layers or more ended up looking pretty good, but then it started to look like “40 grit” again. So, my assumption based on reading a ton of forum threads tonight, is that I must have dried out the outer layer on the spool but not dry enough overall, and now that it started to feed in “wet” it started looking bad.
The S2 is something I got on Amazon only just over a week ago. What I’m tempted to do is keep the S2 for printing when I can’t use the AMS (most of my filaments can use the AMS), and maybe get another larger dryer for doing the initial drying. I did print a bunch of desiccant holders for the AMS, so I’m thinking that once I get filaments dry, if they’re ams compatible I should be able to get by using them in the AMS. I will always store them in sealed cereal containers, after also putting them in those vacuum bags made for spools. I also bought a bunch of slice engineering desiccant canisters that go inside the center of the spool, so those will stay with the spools too…and I’ll dry them with the spools as well.
What I’m considering doing is getting either the big/ugly PrintDry Pro 3 that can dry a couple rolls simultaneously at 85C, or pick up a 10-12 tray food dehydrator that can do 90C. Would love your input on which you think would be best. Then I’d dry everything in that, canisterize and vacuum bag it, and when I print touchy filaments I’ll just throw it in the S2 while I print.
I printed a bunch of parts using PETG-CF and was very happy with how those worked right out of the package. My intention with buying the Bambu was to be able to print Nylon, mainly because most of the stuff I want to print is either for outdoor use or I want it to be strong. First project were some large clamp brackets that hold a 20’ tall flag pole for a starlink mini. The PETG-CF seems plenty strong for that. I was just hoping that by using PA6-CF and PAHT-CF I could get some really tough stuff printed when I need to.
So does that all sound pretty reasonable? Food Dehydrator or PrintDry Pro 3, plus S2 at print time. I don’t really want to have all my space used up because I don’t have a lot of in-the-house climate controlled storage for things like the print dry pro 3 or the dehydrator. Those things would have to live outside in a shed that may get to -20F or -30F at some point, and I’d have to bring them in the house to fire them up. So the S2 just seems like a good way to go for small.
A secondary option is, just buy one or two more S2’s because they fit nicely on tables and are small, and run them for 2 days for each new roll I buy. If that works just as well, I could save money and space by going that route. Or do the S4 thing like you suggested, but then I’m losing more storage/table space.
BTW: My S2 is the newer model with a fan. So that at least is a positive. Overall my only complaint with the unit that I see is that I wish it went to at least 80C.
I could dry the filament in my standard household oven too, but that seems like a big energy waste and probably not great temp control, unless maybe since it’s a convection oven the air circulation would be better and more even. I do have temp probes I can throw in there to validate that the filament area is being heated to 85 or 90C.
Very thankful for your advice. I think once I get the drying done it’ll likely look better, based on my first few layers on this test print.
I kid.
