Wasn’t sure where to put this since it’s not bambu filament and I don’t think it’s exact to my printer, but how do I use PETG? I’m sure I’ve done something wrong. This was right out of the vacuum sealed packaging and quite frankly it looks awful lmao.
I mostly got this to print a dummy 13, would this still work for something so intricate?
Right out of the vacuum packed seal doesn’t necessarily mean the filament is dry enough to print well. Try drying it out and printing again.
As @jetpad mentioned, sealed filament doesn’t mean dry, and it looks like your filament is wet.
And a third vote for wet filament.
Straight from the bag unfortunately doesn’t mean dry. The rolls I tested of PETG HF from Bambu were all high enough moisture content to show water effects until I dried them.
Can’t tell you if the filament isn’t dried at the factory, or if the bags they seal the filament in let water through, or even if they are using desiccant bags in their packaging that aren’t dry. But somehow most filament I’ve tested (PLA, ASA, and PETG HF) has all had high moisture right out of the shipping bag. Many times the PLA would still print ok but I’d see water effects come and go with the weather.
The best way to dry your filament will depend on your ambient humidity. If it’s low, a standard filament dryer or even food dehydrator should do the job. But if your humidity tends to higher values things may get more involved. And storage gets more important too as your ambient humidity goes up. Some good threads here on filament storage.
Alright thank you guys, I do live in England so the humidity is pretty damn high, I guess I’ll have to get a proper dehumidifier instead of just a box full of the silica ones. I’m guessing PETG is more sensitive towards moisture? Since my PLA is perfectly fine and prints well with a bit of stringing
Yep. PETG HF (all I’ve used of PETG) is definitely more sensitive to moisture. I took a couple of photos just because I was doing a fairly deep dive on filament drying because of my own moisture issues.
The first is white PETG HF that went straight from the bag to the AMS to print. Not the best photos but I was getting doughy/puffy looking surfaces, lifting at corners, and lots of stringing.
The second photo is the same model printed after drying the spool. Very little stringing, beautifully flat surfaces, and no corner lifting.
The third photo is PLA also printed without drying and after. There, the wet would lift a corner and then the nozzle skipping across the surface would cause scarring. My experience was PLA would take increased humidity to start acting up but it was still susceptible to water effects.
Unfortunately, if you live in humid climates (and mine isn’t that humid) you can see issues. Complicating all this is filament arrives with varying levels of moisture and if it sits out for variable amounts of time that can scramble water content even more.
Full disclosure - I went off the deep end and built an air dryer that feeds dry air into my filament dryer. That combination lets me dry filament very effectively every time. I dry to a filament dryer humidity level (20%) and on the humidity test all my filament pulls the air to lower humidity than the hygrometers can measure. (The difference is it’s 20% and hot in the dryer but in storage it all cools down and water stops coming off the filament.) I store my filament in poly cereal boxes and even those without silica gel packs in them peg the hygrometers at their lowest values they can display - 10%. It’s minimal extra effort to dry my spools and I simply do not have water effects now. My prints can have other issues but it won’t be moisture. It simplifies a lot and prints look great.
