Silica gel is starting to run out favour with clay based alternatives taking over the food industry for quite a while now.
If you print your your own containers to place in the AMS or your storage solutions you probably learned quickly that even high temp filaments can fail quickly when trying to refresh the beads in the microwave, not to mention the oven…
For those clay based beads the microwave still works but the bead can get even hotter than silica gel.
Wouldn’t it be nice to just get those beads into like a small bag ?
The clay ones already come mostly in paper bags and no surprise these bags tolerate the microwave quite well while the plastic based shrink and melt away.
So what can be used at home to prevent those beads from going everywhere when we have to refresh them ?
Tyvek is great, easy to get together with s bad sealer but also start shrinking at temps of around 85ºC and melts around 140 to 160.
Polyethylene based fabrics are literally the same thing.
Kevlar is nice, same for the fabric used in airbags but way too thick for our use.
One day it hit me, literally and the form of some vintage box of paper coffee filters while trying to get something out of the kitchen cabinet.
Hmmm…
That’s just paper and water goes right through it…
But how to seal it ???
Those crimp things to form business cards and craft paper already provide some reasonable grip if the paper is close to tearing apart but not enough to survive a lot of handling with a full load of beads.
Worse still the paper isn’t as strong as it seems, once it starts to rip it fails very quickly indeed.
I thought I found the ideal ‘paper’ in a craft shop.
A bit like filter paper in structure but with a smooth surface.
Sadly it turned out it wasn’t just paper but also plastic involved.
My current attempt is with filter sheets as used for commercial deep frying system or by those making their own bio diesel at home.
A bit too thick for my liking but very durable.
I also found a more reliable way of gluing them together.
For smaller bags a thin layer of sodium silicate, made from crystal cat litter works great.
For larger bags in excess of about 50g silicone seems to do the trick.
Bonds well with the paper fibres and has no issues with the steam temps when refreshing in the microwave.
I tried refreshing some larger clay based bags that come with my lathe but found that it is quite hard.
The steam struggles to get out in the microwave and in the oven it just takes way too long and needs far too much energy to be viable unless you have a full tray or two.
I also did some little tests to see whether or not the claims from the producers are correct.
Turns out these clay beads are really good at their job and seem to (initially) absorb moisture at a higher rate than silica beads.
But this soon flattens out and where the clay starts to struggle to keep up silica beads still keep going for a good while longer.
My meters are not sensitive enough below 10% humidity to be trusted but I would still say that fresh clay beads are able to reach lower values as silica beads.
Not that it makes any real difference in the mid range.
After all this and being happy with my results for a few months my neighbour had a little water problem and asked if I would have some of my silica gel supplies available for his needs to save some things while trying to fully dry them.
Went over there full of pride and explained what it took to get to my own paper bags that last…
He looked at me a bit like I am trying to explain how to blow up a balloon…
Then, without letting me know what he finds so amusing he called his wife.
Mid you that both are past the pension age…
“Look at this darling…
He went through weeks of trouble just to give me some beads in paper bags.
What would you say is good to hold tiny beads while being able to to survive a mircrowave while drying?”
‘Don’t know, some old sock, t-shirts, anything made from cotton really…’
“thought so.” he said and kept smiling at me after which he thanked me and said he would bring the bags in a few days…
I was thinking long and hard about sharing this but thought my total failure to apply logic might be as amusing for you as it was for my neighbour.
And well, if we can’t even take our own failures with laughing eye we might as well go six feet under right away LOL
Turns out can wander through the forest and complain all day long.
But sometimes it really isn’t those trees blocking the view of the forest, it is just narrow minded thinking…
If you enjoyed this little story than please have a good and hard laugh on my behalf.
Life just is too short to go without 
