Let me tease you with an answer by providing you a photo of one of my favorite drying accidents:
If you’re new to the community, you’ll likely notice two things that may seem contradictory but are both true:
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Unlike Reddit or Discord, this forum is organized by topic and encourages focused, long-form discussion. Some of the most useful experience-based advice can be found here.
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Like Reddit and Discord, there’s also a fair amount of bad advice - often from people with more opinions than data. Opinions are not facts. Just because someone shares one doesn’t make them wrong, but many are biased, anecdotal, or flat-out incorrect.
My first piece of advice: don’t trust anything you read here - or anywhere - without testing it for yourself. That includes what I’m telling you. I try to validate things with real testing, but my conditions may not match yours. As a former U.S. president said: “Trust, but verify.” Most people here mean well - that’s what makes this a solid community - but some get oddly defensive when their opinions are challenged with data.
On the subject of dryers:
If your current drying method works, then that’s the best solution for you. But here’s what I’d suggest: learn to recognize what dry filament actually is. The key rule - easy to test - is this: verify.
If I had a dollar for every “I dried it for ## hours” post, I’d be retired. That approach gives false comfort. The only reliable method to know if filament is drying is to weigh it before and during drying. If the weight drops, moisture is leaving. If it doesn’t, it was probably already dry. Less likely: your dryer isn’t reaching effective temperatures - anything below 50°C is questionable. Heat is necessary to dry filament. Just make sure you don’t follow my experience with the photo at the top. Heat is necessary… more heat? Not so much!!
As for purpose-built dryers: in general, the fancier they look, the worse they perform. Their big advantage is convenience - they let you print directly from the dryer, which saves time. But if you’re drying multiple spools at once, they get expensive fast.
If you want to go deep, I did a head-to-head bake-off between the Sunlu S2 and Creality Pi dryers. Spoiler: I returned the Sunlu. It technically worked, just poorly. The takeaway? Even bad methods can dry filament - just not well. The review thread is long, but the community’s contributions are worthwhile:
Some clever users even use their heated print beds as dryers:
And of course, my personal ghetto favorite
- Note: This was my very first foray into filament drying and that pic you see is my printer with a filament box, something Bambu suggests on their wiki, not my idea:
