Thanks for clarifying your point because in all candor it did at first come across as snarky and condescending. But let’s be honest, this is always a challenge in conveying our intended meaning using the written word. This is only made worse with the art of writing disappearing from our culture. In fact, I find myself having to use far too many emoji’s simply to temper when I mean something tongue and cheek. It’s a hard balancing point.
I am totally on board with that point. In an analogous situation, there are too many occasions when you see people grab a screwdriver and try to perform calibrations, mistakenly believing they can do better that a trained factory tech, before making any attempt to rule out the obvious.
There are also many occasions when newbies, having read something or seen a YouTube video, enter a conversation with often misplaced preconceived notions. As you adroitly pointed out, first verify that this is the problem, then, and only then, worry about a remedy.
If moisture was NOT an issue affecting our prints, we would not bother monitoring weight or humidity or even reading this topic. Failure to monitor moisture causes our prints to fail. So, moisture control is a requirement, not an option. I could control it by moving to a desert, but than I’d have to deal the consequences of living with air too dry for other purposes.
I picked the Eibos Easdry because unlike many other dryers it ventilates the moist air to get it out of the box. I do not see much point in dryers that heat the filament to drive out moisture if the spool remains surrounded by airborne moisture. I don’t particularly like having the cover as a separate piece and it is sometimes a little difficult to grab the spool for removal. So overall, it gets the job done well but there is room for improvement. 4.36 out of 5 stars.
So the Eibos cover is completely separate from the unit? Is it possible to affix some hinges to it?
I just today got the Creality Space Pi Dual dryer and it, too, has the ventilating fans. I just powered it up with one spool in to check on how low the RH will get in the unit. In addition to their RH display, I put in one of my better hygrometers to check how accurate it is. The cover pivots to the rear; I’d rather it pivot to the front so that I could place the unit back further, but if that is the only thing I can find wrong with it, I’ll be completely happy!
I have one of those at work, but they are better suited to water content measure in liquids than solids.
But I do have a previous version of one of this at home (mini chemistry lab):
If you aren’t having issues with water, why even concern yourself with this?
Someone else also replied that only people having moisture issues would be reading this thread. Not true. I read threads about problems people are having because I love to learn, and that knowledge may help me in the future diagnose a problem I am having. So to answer your question, that is why I am even concerning myself with this.
And now you are sounding like you are ridiculing the process.
Sorry if that is your interpretation of what I am saying. I live by the rule that, before assuming someone is being hateful, hurtful, vengeful, or even ridiculing, I first ensure that that was their intent. I find it a good rule especially for public forums.
correcting your misconceptions and prejudices is getting old.
Then don’t. You don’t like what I say, say nothing & move along. Best we ignore one another from now on.
After drying my PETG HF thoroughly, the prints are improved quality over my prints that were done straight out of the box.
PLA, not so much. So no I make it a habit to weight any new PETG and ABS, out of the box, and then after drying for a couple intervals until I no longer see weight loss.
Wasn’t a ton of science or thought put in to it. I see the results, I’m good with it
I wouldn’t have reached that conclusion had you not kept talking the way you were about weighing and measuring humidity recommendations to those having issues. I can only speak for myself but I don’t care that you think weighing and measuring humidity “is going down a rabbit hole” but I do care that you chose to speak about your own personal drying environment and experience like it was the only valid one. It isn’t and others can benefit from weighing spools before and after drying. Period.
You’re right, however, that continuing to discuss this with you is a waste of time.
oddsandsods I looked at those to do exactly as you have done. How is it working out for you? I purchased a Creality Space Pi figuring I would try it out for a week or two before deciding to keep it or not.
It’s working grate and saves a lot of drying time vs my space pi. It gets up to 70c and has really good airflow, I printed some riser rings for it that I found and can fit 8 rolls in it. It takes about 6-8 hours to dry 8 rolls of Esun PETG.
That’s what I do, I have a de-humidifier hooked to my filament cabinet. It is not intended to dry the filament but to keep it from absorbing moisture as much as possible. So far it has worked for me in all types from PLA, ABS, PETG and even TPU.
I suppose if you snipped off, say, 1-10g of filament from a roll and then baked the hell out of it at high heat for a short duration, you could maybe extrapolate from the weight loss what the moisture content is of the remaining roll. What no one here knows is how much of the weight loss is water versus something else (voc’s or whatever), so we just assume it’s water. So, to at least partially address that issue, maybe you heat it at a temperature no higher than the glass transition temperature. I would say the temperature you print it at, but then it would just melt all over everything. With lots of airflow, I’m guessing a small enough sample would give up most of its moisture pretty quickly at those temps. Maybe in just a minute or two? Anyone agree/disagree? So, if you had a heatgun where you could set the air temperature, maybe that would be an easy way to decide without having to pedantically dry every spool of filament just to be sure. In this case, having a scale that can resolve to 0.01g or 0.001g would be useful/necessary to compensate for the small sample size. Otherwise, I don’t know how you could possibly do it.
Without such a method, though, I’m well within the @lkraus camp of drying every time as a way of avoiding at least the moisture problem. It avoids wasting time and filament, and I’ve already lost enough of both to this nagging issue that I’m not willing to keep repeating those losses in the future.
Earlier in this thread someone recommended the Praki cereal containers for storage. Many people use it. It may be the most common one, and the same design goes by different names. I just recently did an experiment where i filled one with 48F dewpoint air, put in a wireless TH sensor with nothing else, sealed it up and left it in my garage, where the dewpoint is presently 68F. With nothing substantial in there to buffer the humidity, the TH Sensor will quickly notice any changes in moisture. Suffice it to say that after just 4 days, the dewpoint has already risen to 66F. The volume of air is 4 liter. From that info, probably someone could calculate the mass of water that penetrated into it. Anyway, it may seem sealed against moisture, but it’s not looking that way, unless it managed to extract moisture from the sensor itself.
From the looks of it, the majority of it happened in the first 48 hours, which I guess is what one would expect from osmotic theory: the greater the differential in concentration, the greater the driving force. Right? Hopefully, someone with the right sort of background/knowledge might comment. Where is someone versed in the physical sciences when you need them?
Postscript:
According to chatgpt:
The air in the container gained approximately 0.033 grams of moisture when the dew point increased from 48°F to 68°F.
The prompt I gave it was:
If the dewpoint in a 4 liter container of air raises from 48F to 68F, how many grams of moisture did it gain?
Assuming that’s right, maybe that isn’t so bad. It’s not zero, but neither is it sinking like the Titanic.
From info such as this, you might project how long your desiccant might last, or how much you would need to add to absorb intruding moisture for whatever duration you mean to keep your filament dry.
It could also be water stuck to the surface of everything in the container. That would be a virtual leak. It’s what contamination in high vacuum systems is frequently called because things will gradually unstick from the walls, especially if there is a forcing condition like dry air blown into a container that previously had moist air.
One way to test could be to put dry air in the container again and see if you see the same humidity increase. You’ll probably see some but less of an increase each time you do it as more water comes off the walls. If it’s the same humidity increase each time then it could be water diffusing through the plastic. I kind of doubt it given the thickness of the walls but who knows?
I did the same thing a few days ago with the same result. Was a bit surprised but it’s apparently a slow process. It could be the variations are coming into play maybe during manufacturing? No idea but I saw the same thing.
@CRracer712 I dry PETG at 65-70C, and I don’t think I’ve ever gotten less than 1g of water out of a fresh new roll, including Sunlu PETG. In contrast, you are drying at 56C and sometimes getting zero moisture out of it. I suggest you re-try, but at a higher temperature.
Also, be aware that your filament dryer may be lying to you about the temperature inside it. Confirm with your own temperature probe. Whenever I’ve done this with a consumer grade filament dryer, the temperature reported by the dryer was always higher than what I measured with a probe.
I’m a little confused here. After 12 hours at ~133°, confirmed by IR thermometer, both the black and the red have lost 2 grams.
The white hasn’t lost any, it hasn’t been in the dehydrator. It’s sitting on the counter and is the same weight after 12 hours in open air as it was when I removed it from it sealed packaging. I’m only mentioning the white to see if it ever changes weight wise, from it’s new sealed state, to being left out(before drying).
I don’t go by my dehydrator’s settings, well, I sorta do. I start it, check it with IR and adjust to my liking.
@CRracer712 I hope this doesn’t come across as pedantic, but if using an IR sensor, you need to know what material you’re taking the reading on and then look it up in an emissivity table to get a conversion factor, which you then multiply against your measurement to get the true temperature. Are you doing that already? If not, the table probably came with your IR sensor when you bought it.
