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Low Budget Filament Dryer?

Durahl

Active member
So a while ago I came across a YouTube Video suggesting the use of the actual Print Bed itself as a low budget Filament Dryer which quite frankly made a lot of sense to me so off I went to make myself one using my CO² Laser:
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To check how the Temperature / Humidity Sensor in the front would fare I've had the Bed set to 70°C, closed the Enclosure and left it like that for a few hours at which point the Temperature was barely scratching the 50°C Mark but the Humidity had dropped to like 10% ( down from 50% taken straight out of its shipping Box ) while the external Thermistor touching the Build Plate ( weighted down with a piece of Aluminium ) was reading 68°C ( the 63.8°C came from an earlier reading )

The obvious question now is the thing regarding the Termperature / Humidity Sensor never reaching the intended 70°C while displaying a reduced Humidity.
  • Should I even care about never reaching the set Temperature on the Termperature / Humidity Sensor ( are they perhaps not made to measure such temperatures? 🤔 )
  • Should I perhaps only be caring the Humidity? It is technically the only thing we care about... 🤨
 
Seems to me the whole point is to get the water out of the filament. If it accomplishes that without quite hitting the set temperature, who cares? You have achieved the end goal.

While using the bed is an interesting solution I have two things that keep me content in having spent the money on a separate dryer. One, I cannot use the printer while it's drying the filament (in almost all cases, I've had the printer running jobs while a different spool is drying & the jobs for it sit in the queue). Two, that's just more hours on the bed heater and I'm not sure it's as efficient use of power vs a dedicated small enclosure of a dryer--though that part is probably negligible.
 
How many prints use the entire height of our build volume? Is there room for a mod that hangs a roll of filament in the top space of the printer that allows printing to happen at the bottom while drying a roll in the top?
 
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