Do these so-called air-tight containers really hold up against barometric pressure? Or do they leak a bit in both directions. I ask because I never do seem to see them buckling inward nor puffing outward, nor do I hear any pffffftttttt! when I open them. Somehow they seem to be in pressure equilibrium with the outside even though they are supposedly air-tight.
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It’s a good question, but I think the answer might be that baggies are waterproof, but they aren’t especially moisture-proof. Think Tyvek housewrap as an example of how something can be one but not the other. Maybe you can think up an easy experiment of some kind for testing that to what degree it might be true or not for baggies.
Would the desiccant negate that effect? Maybe yes, if the water molecule makes contact with the desiccant first after crossing the barrier. However, maybe not so much if it contacts the filament first, and there’s a lot more filament surface area than there will be desiccant surface area. Maybe if you could somehow fully wrap the filament in desiccant it would work.
Exactly what I use, plus I have the ESun vacuum seal bags for good measure on some of them
If you do a cost per spool analysis they are not expensive. Your solution is $1.27 per spool. I got the sterilite from Amazon, same ones people are getting at Walmart. $51 for 6 containers and they hold 4 each that is $2.12 per spool. Yours is the better solution and may take up less space.
This is exactly what I was NOT looking for. I already have this solution and it’s what I meant in my initial post that my ideal solution would be something let’s me view inventory-at-a-glance without having to unpack a trunk.
So far the best solution I’ve seen on a cost per spool and meeting all my criteria might be the one suggested by @lexi. I have to get my ass down Home depot to see if this in fact will hold up to a Bambu spool, the largest in my inventory. If it does, the dimensions suggest that it could hold up to five of them. As a stackable solution, that would give me a side view where I could see all of my inventory without having to unpack a trunk.
The perfects solution would have been the printdry container posted by @RandomKhaos if it weren’t for the extreme price per spool $12.50 plus shipping. At that cost, I’m spending well over $200 to just address a portion of my inventory. If it were let’s say $6/spool, it might be another story.
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Have you tried looking into food storage containers? Notionally, something like:
I realize that particular one may not be the exact dimension you’re looking for, but there are a gazillion different ones to choose from, all different sizes. Not all of them are expensive.
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Have you looked at these?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09ZLBJQDW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
It’s what I use because it holds one roll with a hygrometer and I put a center hole desiccant holder.
4 for $18 i just bought my third set with a 10% coupon. So even less with discount.
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Even better! Nice find. I just now ordered 8 of them based purely on your recommendation.
Much better than what I’m presently doing.
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I’m pretty much using the same thing. Those cereal containers are the best option for the price. I would much prefer a solution like the PrintDry, just don’t want to spend that kind of money. I setup one of the containers to be a dry box spool holder with rollers so I can feed TPU in through the back since it doesn’t work well in the AMS.
If you are looking to save a hair more, these are the ones I purchased and found to be the best deal per container.
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Thanks to all contributors for the valuable input. Although we occasionally veered off-topic, the shared knowledge was greatly beneficial. Some excellent ideas arose, and as an example of the varied input I’m considering exploring vacuum chambers in the future.
In the meantime, here’s where this exploration ended up. Note: My solution was based on personal preferences and in no way should it be perceived as a criticism if I didn’t follow your suggestion. I thank you nevertheless for chiming in with great ideas.
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Yes, I haven’t exactly ruled that out, but I haven’t ruled it in either. I actually have a folder on Amazon called “Spool Related,” and this particular container that you linked to, as well as other similar ones, is saved in that folder. I even put them in my cart and then at checkout, moved them to “saved for later.” The sole reason for that tactic is if they ever go on flash sale, the Amazon algorithm will send a text and I’ll likely buy as many as a dozen if the price is right.
While those containers were the genesis of this original post, they may indeed make great dry boxes, and I may build some eventually. However, they are not only space-inefficient, but on a per-spool basis, they exceed even what I consider a reasonable threshold that I am trying to stay under. Additionally, their tapered shape also makes sideways fitment very clumsy.
Solution chosen (shoutout to @lexi)
As I posted the previous message, I got off my chair and went down to Home Depot to actually inspect the exact box that @Lexi posted above. At $15 per box, they were the leading candidate for my preferred solution but I wanted to visually verify for myself. So spools in hand, I went down to Home Depot and learned that, while not perfect, they were close enough. So although I only needed to store about 30 spools, I bought all 8 that they had on hand. More about that later.
They accommodate 5 standard spools of various types that I have lying around. But as usual, Bambu Spools are just 5mm off, limiting Bambu to 4 spools per case. You gotta believe this is part of Bambu’s walled-garden-closed-sandbox-mentality, there is zero reason to be different and the only beneficiary is Bambu, as I’m sure the many AMS workarounds on Printables and Thingiverse will show. In the end the customer loses.
So, for regular spools (cardboard, plastic, Elegoo, Overture, Poly etc.), the fit for five spools was perfect, which put the cost per spool at $3 each, and naturally, that means a 20% increase for the oversized Bambu Spools. Contrasting that with vacuum bags, which come in at around $1 each, you pay three times as much for the convenience of high visibility and ease of use. I consider that a fair trade.
| Bags | Totes | Food Container | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | $20.00 | $15.00 | $20.00 |
| # of Spools | 20 | 5 | 4 |
| Cost/Spool @ 5 spools | $1.00 | $3.00 | $5.00 |
| Cost/Bambu @ 4 spools | $3.75 |
Here’s the mess I was dealing with.
Here’s what the remedy looked like. You can see that when stacked, they take up a minimum amount of space while at the same time, allowing for across-the-room view of product-on-hand.
Bambu Solution 
Bambu succeeded in screwing up an otherwise standard solution. As if I needed more incentive to not buy their filaments, other than overpriced, poor availability, poor customer service, bad return policy and bad delivery options.
________________________________________________________
The Pros of the Ezy Storage Solution
- 4-sided lockable, gasketed seal providing an IP67 water tight vapor barrier against water ingress.
- Perfect dimension for 5 standard spools and still room for desiccant tray at the bottom.
- Stackable with lid-to-base interlocking feat. No crazy top handles to get in the way like Sterilite containers have.
- Transparent sides giving easy view of interior.(My biggest thumbs up👍)
The Cons
- Top of container has a deliberate frosting, presumably to allow for writing with a magic marker or adhering tape but makes the top non-transparent.
- The width could benefit from an extra 20-30mm giving more space and even allowing for a five spool drybox solution. At present, five spools don’t have enough room to spin, making a drybox only possible with 4 spools.
- This ain’t Rubbermaid or Sterilite so the longevity of this supplier and form-factor remains in question. I will likely buy four more just to keep on hand for what I fear will be planned obsolescence or the product just disappears.
Here’s a link that will allow one to search by the exact part number and description.
https://www.google.com/search?q=FBA34060+ezy+storage
On the subject of obsolescence and nitpicking at costs
A few years ago, I became really frustrated with all the disparate 25-gallon tote boxes lying around my attic and basement. My wife doesn’t have an industrial background, so she doesn’t appreciate the value of container uniformity. Consequently, she simply bought whatever was on sale over the years. As a result, we ended up with a ton of mismatched or missing lids and totes that weren’t interstackable, nestable, or interchangeable. During a long-overdue spring cleaning with a rented dumpster, I counted close to $1,000 worth of mismatched items that had to be tossed that day. This is why I will likely hoard another 8 of these Ezy Storage containers when they come back in stock, just to ensure a longer-term solution. I can’t imagine having 80 spools on hand, but I can foresee these containers wearing out or, more likely, being discontinued or the company going out of business.
I’ve always maintained that I’m not averse to spending when I get value. However, I am averse to throwing away money or overspending. Let’s be candid: $1,000 on plastic boxes that end up in the landfill for 20 years of stuff won’t break our budget, but to me, that could have been a really nice graphics card or a nice 3D printer. 
That’s the part that sticks in my craw, I hate waste.
For you US grain-belters… Menards has these for $9ea.
That puts this near the at $1.80/spool which is coming much closer to a vacuum bag solution I’m trying to replace.
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BTW, I hadn’t noticed this before ordering, but I just now noticed it in the reviews for the cereal containers that barry linked to:
Nice of the reviewer to post a picture with the BBL spool in the photo, not to mention the filament bunker, if that’s your inclination.
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Printdry has this pitch that’s meant to show the efficacy of their vacuum storage:
However, I’m left wondering whether either the same or essentially the same results would accrue with the same 5 pouches of desiccant and sealed container, but without the vacuum? Or perhaps chucking in some extra desiccant packs could maybe achieve equivalence that way.
You are absolutely correct!!!
These sorts of marketing graphs are what really piss me off. It preys upon people just not paying attention. To me, this is beyond liberal market speak but crosses the line into outright deception and telling a lie.
Riddle me this? What does a rise in RH in ambient outside air have to do with what’s happening inside the box? What they don’t want you do see is what the before and after is with a box without vacuum vs a box with vacuum.
There is little to no difference. How do I know? Because I conducted an experiment using two identical filament bags, one under vacuum, one not. Each was sealed with two 50g bags of desiccant and a hygrometer. After a few days, there was minimal variation in relative humidity (RH). So, one might ask, why use a filament vacuum bag at all? I repeated the experiment with only one desiccant bag in each filament bag, and unsurprisingly, the vacuum-sealed bag did have a slightly lower RH. I attribute this to the fact that the desiccant in the bag under vacuum had less air and therefore didn’t have to work as hard as the one without vacuum.
However, when it comes to a hard-sided container like the example given, unlike a bage, there’s no reduction in air volume unless you apply hard vacuum. Until I see some pressure measurements, I’m skeptical about these claims. And that’s my contention, they are comparing apples and oranges not like-case to like-case. That’s just pure deception in my book.
Nearly the same points you mentioned in this thread led me to my solution, which is comparable to yours. But I’ve chosen the IKEA Samla Box 22L, which can hold 4 normal spools (incl. the spools from Bambu Lab). Because they are not sealed against air and humidity ingress, some extra actions were todo. I bought EPDM foam 6mm x 2mm to seal the lid on the box and printed 6 clips per box to to press the lid onto the box. I have 12 boxes in summary, so the material costs me ~8€ per box, which makes ~2€ per spool.
Because the filament is stored and used in my cellar, I decided to upgrade the storage boxes to dry boxes. This was the point where it became expensive. I added the following parts:
- silicat container (~400g filament) ~6€
- silicat (based on filament 400 - 800gr) ~4 - 8€
- Zigbee temperature and humidity sensor ~6€
With this the whole dry box costs around 28€, which makes ~7 € per spool.
As you mentioned, everyone has different requirements… this fulfills mine and I’m very happy with this for now. The integration in my smart home enables notifications, if the humidity rises up above 25%. Because the boxes are stacked on rolling boards, I can get a quick look into the boxes to get an overview about the content. And at least the filament is housed in a space-saving manner. 
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Those spool trough’s are a nice touch. Are those something you designed yourself, or something you downloaded from printables/etc.?
I use ZipLoc 1 Gal Freezer bags with a desiccant pack in each one. If the spool was in a box I reuse it to hold the bag and write on the spine the color and material. If no box was provided I just stack them on their sides and us a Sharpie to label the color and material (even thought the color may be easy to see.)
If a spool is loaded into an AMS I line up the boxes or bags in the order they are installed in the AMS’s.
-SKB
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They are self-designed and can be found on Printables. There are some nice remixes available too.
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One thing that can really help if you’re worried about the seals is to add some grease around the interface. I’m sure you already have a bunch of the grease Bambu sends for the z rods, or just petroleum jelly should work too. Back when plastics didn’t live everywhere vacuum chambers were made from glass, and the seal between the lid and the bottom was in fact, just grease.
Taking the manufacturer claim with lots of salt also improves the product’s performance as salt also absorbs moisture.
Was there meaning behind this statement or was this simply dry humor?
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