Well decided to give a dryer a try. After some looking, went with the Sovol SH02.
Works great. Does exactly what their website claims. Heats fast, air circulation is excellent. Setting for each type of filament is preprogrammed, but any parameter can be modified.
Unit will heat up to 70 Deg C, holds two 1kg spools, and has bins in the bottom for desiccant if you can’t get to pulling out the spools right away.
Fan is a bit noisy (whines). Don’t know if they are all like that, or if I got a noisy one. Just sent them a message about this.
Have some reusable spools printed in PLA. Was able to dry them at 50 Deg C without any warping.
Got it on sale from Amazon for $64. Is no longer on sale, but keep an eye open around Christmas.
Have you tried printing directly from it, especially TPU?
I want to try TPU printing, but given how hygroscopic the material is and how people describe issues with printing it it seems printing from filament dryer is the best option.
Not yet. Busy printing parts for work. Hope to try TPU next week and will give the dryer a try. That will depend on whether I finish with the work stuff. Lately, as soon as I finish one work print projret, something comes up and I need to print another one.
Understood. The COMGROW has the same ‘list price’ as the SOVOL, so I am pretty sure they are the same. But if your comment is directed to both SOVOL and COMGROW being lower cost, you are absolutely right. I doubt if either one has UL certification, which gives me a bit of pause. tI does claim to have a thermal protection circuit on the heating element and a stopped fan alarm (both SOVOL and COMGROW - another reason to think they are identical), so they are at least a little bit concerned about safety, but I have dealt with Chinese companies professionally (30+ years as an electronics engineer) so I know some are more responsible than others.
I did buy the COMGROW SH02 dryer. Nice UI actually, although its suggested temperature and time does not match Bambu recommendations for their filaments. Two things I noticed is that the actual temperature runs about 5C lower than the temperature reported on its display, but the humidity reported on the display tracks a hygrometer in the unit pretty well.
I am not quite sure why, but it doesn’t seem to dry things as well as my Crealty dryer. When I dry a spool there, my hygrometer goes down to 10% (its lowest reading) and when I take it out and put it into a vacuum-sealed bag with a hygrometer, it runs about 15%. With the COMGROW, the humidity reading on both the display and my hygrometer in the unit both were bottomed out about 20-25% and that is about what I got when I put the dried roll in a bag with a hygrometer. Not sure why there is a difference, but it just doesn’t seem to work as well.
I have both of these, the Comgrow & Sovol. Both from Amazon, same price. They look almost the same, the Sovol’s screen is slightly larger & its grey over the comgrow’s unit is black. Otherwise they seem to be the same unit, down to they both throw out H1 errors atleast once a week. I agree them seem to underheat, i typically just crank it up 5 degrees. I went with these 2 units over say the big Sunlu, just so i can cook 2 types at once.