A rant about filament dryers...

My DIY projects and courses:

[ZappyOh]

I usually spit on my filament for good luck.

[TimmyM]

Finally, a channel with a sober take on the 3D printing market. Thank you! 🙏

[Marshbouy]

I understand where you’re coming from in this video, but I live somewhere where it is consistently 70-80% humidity and a filament dryer was one of the most important things I bought for improving the quality of my prints.

[ziggystardog]

While I mostly agree, I find old PLA gets brittle and breaks from hydrolysis when it's left in the open for many months or years. No amount of filament drying seems to recover from that, so I've adopted an approach of not opening filament before its time and resealing with desiccant if a spool's been in the open for more than a few months.

[riba]

I'm sorry but I have to disagree with this one. You are lucky because you live in a low humidity area, but trust me, both pla and abs/asa absolutely can have moisture issues, I had new roll of asa get extremely wet just from sitting open in a humid basement (80%) for one day and it printed like pure garbage until I dried it. Similar with pla just not to that extent. Also many folks print tpu and petg today and you don't want to use those without owning a dryer, period

[CHEEBnRUN]

Even on reddit, it's become a bit of a meme. Don't worry, people are starting to call out others who proclaim moisture issues at every turn.

[onurcetinkaya]

humidity is not much of a problem when the nozzle internal volume is low, but it becomes a problem if the melted plastic volume is high because more water causes more vapor pressure and that causes stringing. Stringing is also less controllable with larger nozzle diameters. So if you are using a regular 0.4mm, v6 or mk8 nozzle not drying your filament is acceptable, but if you are using something like a 0.8mm, volcano type nozzle drying the filament is a must.

[Its_Danny-]

I think in high humidity areas it is valid but most people could do without, i think that's the point he was trying to get across. I live next to germany and still have one of my first ever rolls of filament (ender 3 v2 struggles) and even after like 4-5 years it prints the same as when i got it, pla ofcourse. Now recently i tried petg and it works but if I really had a problem with moisture i would stick it in the oven rather than buy a dry box. I think for most people in usually dry climates you never need one except for exotic materials or on the off chance once in a lifetime case and in that case I'd use an oven instead of buying a whole dry box, and i think that's what he meant with they're trying to sell you stuff

[Know-Way]

I'm having problems with my diet, so I dried my filament and that fixed it. /S

Thanks for saying it! I find 3D printing issues similar to bad golf. Folks just buy more and more things to try to fix problems with not understanding the problem. Buying more expensive golf clubs won't fix a bad swing.
Buying a filament dryer won't fix a wrong z-offset, or incorrect extrusion flow rate.

[MisterDeets]

ABS prints so much cleaner when it is dry. I tend to print a lot with Nylon, PETG and PET filament. A dryer is a requirement for those types of filament IMO.

[saturnmedia]

ESun PLA+ is VERY hydroscopic. If I leave it out, it gets VERY brittle. Several nylons and PETG is too.

[TheKdlyfe]

I only print abs and I started drying my filament every new roll and if I haven’t used the printer in a new weeks, noticed a massive. Improvement.

[OmegaGamingNetwork]

The only time I have to dry filament is PETG that I have had sitting for 6+ months out in the open and even then it is usually a very minor difference. You are 100% correct, most of the problems people have isn't wet filament. I've actually had more filament ruined by crappy filament dryers not having good temperature control than I have moisture. I don't store my filament in any special way, just out in the open on a PVC rack shelf. PLA/ABS never need to be dried. PETG only if it has sat for a long period of time. I can't say for certain on nylon because that crap is expensive and I find it honestly cheaper to just dry it ahead of time and be "paranoid" about it.

[Alex_vGrafenstein]

I think that food dehydrators are the much better filament dryers. They serve almost the same purpose, but manufacturers have optimized their devices while manufacturers of filament dryers mostly seem to have copied the concept but missed to understand the key points.
I am severely space constrained, so I'm still using my X1C for drying. But when I get a dryer some day, it will be the Graef DA2042. It costs less than most dedicated dryers, reaches 80°C, heats up fast due to 300W heater, has very good convection and exchanges the wet air. The only advantage of filament dryers is space unfortunately. But I rather stick to my printer as dryer before I buy such a flawed tool.

[MarinusMakesStuff]

You're right, PCTG is the end all be all ;D Haha j/k. At least for me it is! But it's personal. When it comes to drying.. Well I've been making my own printers since 2012 and can say that moisture is definitely an issue with PLA. It always has been. Maybe it depends on the humidity, but drying my filament when typical artifacts appear, has always worked for me. I just think that most people do not recognize the issue. And in a lot of cases, moisture isn't even that much of an issue. It also heavily depends on the geometry that is being printed.

I think the main issue here is that whenever people see a printing problem, they immediately scream: 'D1d y0u dRy Y0Ur felamonzx!?'. This not only trivializes other real printing issues, but it also snows down other comments that are actually constructive and helpful.

Another problem, is that a lot of companies sell filament dryers that do not evacuate the moist air out of the dryer. Though it seems more and more companies are starting to understand they actually need to think about their designs and filament dryers do improve over the years but most of the dryers are still useless in 2024.

[clockworkvanhellsing]

ASA and TPU and Nylon were the three materials I've needed the dryer. Asa (extrudur yellow) strings heavily when not propperly dried and tpu in vase mode gets critical too. Nylon gets quite bubbly. (My petg expirence is to limeted to make a judgement).

[BeefIngot]

Drying filament in an oven is typically a really bad idea because they usually have poor temperature control which can lead to melted spools and filament all over your oven. When a dryer is only 40 bucks, it's easily worth it to just buy one for just over the cost of a roll.

[Cyborg-gqyq]

I only use pla thanks saved me some money thank you

[richardhobson]

Agree with this 90%! With faster and faster printers, pushing wet filament at high speeds tends to make the steam bubbles a bit more pronounced, especially noticeable printing top layers in PETG. I find PETG and TPU bubbling to be my biggest issues and why I have a pair of dryers.

I've also had some issues with really old (5+ years) brittle PLA. In those cases I usually dry it for a couple days low and slow and then keep it warm when printing. This has only been an issue with stuff I struggled to use up (bad colours) though, so it's rare that I need to do it.

[logicalfundy]

It's definitely a problem when any defect is treated as a moisture problem - usually wet filament has a specific look to it, and top surface problems is generally not a symptom. That I agree with.
I've also been leaning towards preventing moisture by proper dry storage, which generally means only needing to dry it if it's new or hasn't been in proper storage.

I do think that some "dry your filament" replies are a joke, which is annoying because it makes it has the "boy who cried wolf" effect where people ignore moisture even in the occasional case where it turns out to be the problem.

I also see some people basically hide moisture problems with profile adjustments. I guess that is personal preference for aesthetic prints (after all, a profile adjustment is easy if you are familiar with slicing), but for functional prints moisture can weaken the print, even if it visibly looks good. I do a fair bit of functional prints, so I prefer to ensure the filament is dry before looking at profiles. It does seem like most profiles assume dry filament, as I haven't really needed to adjust profiles for stringing. Could also be because I have a Prusa and they have very solid stock profiles.

. . . and yes, there does seem to be more people getting PETG. It's about as cheap as PLA, has higher temperature resistance, has some desirable mechanical properties, and has become easier to print on modern printers. It also doesn't contain Styrene, which needs good ventilation (ABS/ASA).