A few of you have noted that the 608 bearings I used have quite a lot of friction. I prefer this style, but if you're after something that rolls more easily I've linked to a second option in the video description. And while I'm here, huge thanks to everyone who built these boxes and has sent me feedback and suggestions on the design. I really do appreciate it!
The friction is most likely just thick grease. For this application you can clean out the grease with something like brake cleaner, and put in some lighter grease, or even some spray lubricant. With these speeds the bearings will never wear out, not even when used dry. The lubricant mainly acts like a rust preventer, even though that's not that important in a 10% RH environment either.
Here's what I did to address the packed grease bearings: 1. Popped off the bearing shields 2. Cleaned out the existing grease with brake cleaner (not really needed because the next step should take care of cleaning it out a little) 3. Soaked the bearings with WD40 4. Printed hard plastic (ABS/ASA/PLA etc) instead of TPU rollers. I found that using TPU rollers added slightly more drag and friction using cardboard spools. Using hard plastic roller let the cardboard slide a little, thus causing less binding and friction
Nice video, the only thing I can add is that a magnet glued to the side of the spool so you can rewind the spool with another magnet outside the container 😊
I'm planning on trying that this weekend, I've made about 10 of these dry boxes and they are great but rewinding is the only issue I've had. Have you tried the magnet method?
I'm new to 3d printing and really appreciate you sharing the models for this. I was looking at so many different solutions for storage, but these really spoke to me! They went together well, and I can't argue with the results. After 24 hours the empty ones I prepared went from 55%+ humidity down to sub 20.
I made this pretty much as offered. I thought it was wonderful and worked pretty well. Some feedback: -- I used 608 ZZ bearings instead of 608 2SR for less rolling friction. For even less friction you can even use unshielded bearings as this is in an enclosed clean space. -- Be very careful drilling the top hole. I was careful but some still cracked. I think it is from stresses in the plastic at the fill port. -- I modified the coupler cap to be easier to remove. Where the "handle" meets the thin tube I changed it to have a shoulder for added space then a cone section for even more space. You can easily remove the cap with one hand. -- Maybe it's my printer (Bambu A-1 Mini) but I had clearance issues with the roller shafts. I had to sand them all. But other than that the fit and function were perfect. ( I made the rollers from PLA as I don't have any TPU.) --DO NOT buy the silica gel that is clear then only has a small amount of color-changing indicator beads. It is very hard to see them through the basket. I might try printing in white, but just buy the ones he listed. -- I was really surprised at how effective the silica beads are! They take an empty box from 60% humidity to 12% in an hour! -- Has anyone with an A-! Mini made one of these? Have you experimented with having the filament come out at the bottom? Or by moving the Bowden tube directly from the printer to the dry box? I don't know the best orientation to use this in! Thank you for the great design and for making it affordable. Good work!
Hello friend, I found that if you will print this on Bambu Lab A1 unit, both bottom parts fit at once on print bed, you can use the Bambu Lab Studio (previous to print) overlap them a little bit, merge them and print at once as a single piece, it saves time and filament on printing. I print few of those (thanks), but still working on a different support for the base two overpasses instead of the support block. For some reason when printing with PET-G those blocks are almost impossible to remove. Other, I installed the bowden coupler on the top, 1/4 from one edge, so the filament gets out vertically, and I shorten the hygrometer holder arm just to hold the indicator, eliminating the long bottom curved (I don't feel any difference). The box(es) stay aside the printer, it is better way to exit vertical. I also made a tube like a medicine bottle with cap (full of narrow slits), a bit of smaller diameter, 50% full of silica gel, insert into the spool hole, it turns slow along with the spool and move the silica. With that it reaches 14% moisture. Have few of those tubes ready, bake them whenever empty the 1kg spool. Always fresh silica gel.
I use a center core desecant holder that just screws into the hole in the center of the filament spool. That way, if you build your active heater, you could just pop off the lid opening and put it on the heater, then pop the lid back on when it's done.
Thank you very much for a great design and tutorial. I will be doing a slightly improved version of your box. I plan to add two extra holes at the bottom of the box with sealed caps to fit the Polymaker Polydryer. This will still give me plenty of dry boxes for all my filaments but at a more affordable price than buying an extra box for each filament I want to store.
i wish id have seen this video a month ago before i started prototyping my own version of this... i ended up drilling out two middle hole for a bearing roller and attatching a fan and 5ohm resistor for a bit of mild heating. powered by microusb. all attached to the lid. doing it all upside down is great but you have to remove the filament from the tube if you want to uncap it. had to make like 6 different sized rollers for different hole sizes. cheaped out and just poured dessicant beads into the bottom. now I'm going to prototype a version that uses 2 nested containers for insulation and i can put the electronics in the gap.
Great design. I’m finally getting my moisture sensitive filaments out of dry bags and easier to use. I’ll second what someone else said about the bearings. The first 6 dry boxes I used the 2rs bearings and had to pop the dust covers off and degrease them. A small dab of graphite and they are silky smooth. I was getting way too much drag before.
I am soooooo glad you made this video. I have assembled about 36 filament driers from the previous video you mentioned. The most common issue I had with those, is when I opened the top of the container, and the cap for the desiccant/hygrometer holder would pop off, causing desiccant to run wild all over the room. This looks like it will eliminate that problem. On a side note, I loved hearing you say "Freedom Units", I love that phrase. There are two types of Countries on this planet, those that have put a man on the Moon, and those that use the metric system. MURICA!!!!!!!! 🎇🎆🎇🎆🎇🎆🎇🎆
Yeah, I had that same problem with some of my older desiccant bins popping open. I'm enjoying this new system a lot more as I continue to replace the old bins. And I tend to use the term "freedom units" in a joking way, because I really do prefer metric and wish we could just use it everywhere.
Printed 12x Dry Boxes!! Thank you so much for your contribution to this project. Love the upside down orientation. If you progress the agenda to install a heater/fan that fits in the desiccant port… for an active heating/drying system let me know!!
I liked your video. As for a heater dryer, I think you could probably just set the unit fully loaded with filament and dessicant in the sun for a little while. It will heat up and the dessicant will absorb the moisture.
You mentioned metric vs Freedom units. I think I can muddy the waters for you a little more than that. Those bowden tube entry gromets are sold as M10 but the thread on them is actually a G1/8 BSPP - as are a lot of threads that are on parts that were originally pneumatic parts. This is only really useful if you want to either tap the hole or model the thread in the 'rocket' part. The correct tap drill size you might actually have as it's 11/32 (about 8.8mm). I've just finished printing parts for a system the 'right' way round....but now I'm wondering if a 50-50 mix of the two would let me fit them closer together and get more on a shelf.
Fantastic! A much sturdier option than the roller system for these boxes I’ve been using. Thank you for the great redo! I have a Polydryer and hate it. The storage box they use was a good, although poorly set up, idea. These cereal boxes have worked very well for me and this build makes them even better!
Thank you for sharing your ideas. I have 60 of those boxes and will definitively give it a try. One at a time :) One thing to ease the drilling is to use a step drill. They are cheap and do an excellent job on plastic. P.S. There is no blank tag on printables.
Great video Mark, thanks for sharing your project and information! In reference to your workspace, if you have AC in the room and the humidity is too high, there are solutions to help lower it if this space is actually a seperate room in your garage. A decent exterior door that is made to be waterproof with seals, instead of using an interior door, would help quite a bit. Again this assumes this is a seperate room within your garage. Next are the wall, ceiling, and floor. They make moisture barrier concrete sealer if you have a concrete floor. If you have carpet over the floor, it makes sense to remove the carpet, seal the floor, then reinstall the carpet. They also make moisture barrier paint that can be applied to both the walls and ceiling, which should also help the intrusion of water vapor into your workspace. Once you have sealed the room from water vapor from external sources, your air conditioner should easily reduce the moisture in that space to below 40, or even 30%, possibly more, depending on how well the room is treated. Any hear generated in the room will cause the AC to run even more, further reduce its moisture content.
Thanks for all the suggestions. One of the four "walls" of the studio is actually the garage door, so unfortunately there's only so much I can do to keep the humidity away.
I really love this, and will probably be using it for building a DIY MMU (tradrack). I like the drop-in desiccant, versus the glue-in one the other guy did, but the innovation of doing the lid on bottom, was a really cool thing the other guy did, and I like what you've done to improve it. Good work
Thanks! And I agree... the idea to flip the container upside down was the thing that unlocked a lot of new possibilities for me, and is the key thing that makes this all work so well.
Given that humid air is less dense than dryer air, I would store these such that the silica gel is up top. I would install the hygrometer upside down then. I wonder if that would actually make a perceivable change. Anyone who built it try to store it upside down and let us know! I might also design a different capped filament outlet so I don't need to buy PTFE tubes or their fittings. Over all this looks super elegant and I can't wait for the parts to arrive so I can build it. Thanks for the great video!
We have a similar setup. I was considering doing the active cooling trick by using a special "lid" for the Eibos EasDry (I have the same model) which has the connection ports (for two containers, with the Eibos getting feet on the backside and being positioned lid up) -- I'm working on an ESP32 upgrade for that to add active temp/humidity logic to it first, I just need to finish the prototype.
You are a gentleman and a scholar! This is so great, I've been eyeing the PolyBox system but they are hard to get where I live. Would LOVE to see the active attachment version. My only concerns with this design are with the slack potentially tangling, and with the cap not being air tight. I see that you have worked to address both of these issues, just my impression from the video.
If you do in the future decide to modify these to do the active drying, remember that airflow and having some place for the moisture to escape is much more important for effective drying than the heat is. So to have success on that project, ensure you have both a way to ensure good air circulation in the container and a way for the moist air to escape. Both of these could probably be aided by building a vent into the top of the container with some kind of method to seal it when it is not actively drying.
Yeah, this was my initial thought as well... create a circulating airflow through the one big opening. Of course I'll need to do some testing to see how effective this approach can be.
Too funny - my bro and I literally just designed almost this same system yesterday over the phone, and I even already had the same Wildone cereal boxes LOL So OBVIOUSLY a great idea! TY for the STLs - you just saved us a lot of time!
this is a pretty cool project. one thing that i might mention though is that, in your old design you had the desiccant in the top. there's one reason in particular that this was the better design. specifically because humid air is less dense than dry air, and because of that, it rises. in the new design you are in essence drying the dry air with the desiccant in the bottom, while the filament 'soaks' in the upside down 'bucket' full of humid air....
What I've found in practice is that since the new design allows me to open the container exactly once to load a new spool of filament and then never open it again for the lifetime of that spool, the location of the desiccant is less important. At least for my use case, there is enough desiccant in the bin to dry out the interior of the container and keep it dry until I've used up the spool and it's time to load a new one.
I printed the rollers in TPU. That way, the spool has more grip than on hard plastic. I printed the filament stop also in tpu. A bit of flex gives better fit (I think).
I too started out with roller bearings, however it is best to have a little bit of friction otherwise the roll might unwind in a bad way. Just use some PTFE tubing for the contact surface instead.
Great design. Just a thought. Would there be a way to combine the filament tag holder to be that part of the “wasted” support material you built in. Would be material efficient and a cleaver way to reduce waste plastic
@@gunplamark just want to add, I’ve made 6 of these so far and ordering another set of containers to make more, I’ve tried other filament storage methods in the past and this really is a fantastic solution. Going to be putting all of my loose rolls in these from now on, having them in Individual containers ready to print is so much easier than having mass storage in totes and compromising the humidity level everytime you just need one of the spools out. I added hot glue over the top screw and over around the coupler exit to reduce air potentially entering and have most my rolls sitting around 10-15% in what is normally a 45% humidity room.
New to this, your solution looks really affordable !! By the way, I really more interested by your wall of Gundams, what is the honeycomb grid do you use and how do you attach them to it ?
Small weak magnet attached to the spool on the side would enable you to roll back the filament onto the spool from outside with another magnet without having to open the box. Spacing between spool and box should not be too far so that magnet would pull the spool down from the bearings.
Great design, Boxes ordered… one tiny change I will, use a bit of blocked off Bowden tube to seal the filament hole, printed stop is too likely to get knocked/sheared off.
Your approach and design is outstanding. It addresses most all of the concerns and so forth. When it comes to active drying if needed what about cutting an opening out of the other end of the base. In that way one would not need to remove the hydrometer while actively drying. And we could design a TPU plug for the hole when not actively drying. Just a thought. But really you have a great design here, thank you for all the effort you put into this video. Including all the links, it is appreciated.
That approach could work as well. I'm still not sure whether an active drying solution is going to be something I need. I tend to print enough (and with only a few colors) that I use up spools within a few months after opening them, so I'm thinking that the current system will keep everything dry enough for my use case.
Maybe another desiccant holder under the other side, under the roller axle bracket? Can't have too much. Nice enhancement over the original with regards to the desiccant bin and improved roller design with more 3d printed parts.
I currently have 10 open spools that I try to dry before use. Some are in resealable bags with small descant pouches in them. Imma gonna try it. It could save a lot of time and possibly filament. Thanks
You could probably change the description to say that this video exists on your older one. Great solution, I will definitely be seeing if I can source some containers.
I LOVE the idea of this, but my printers are struggling with printing the thin base even with a brim. The petg flexes and will break the part loose, Is there any way to adjust the walls to be a bit thicker?
I see comments about sealed bearings having too much friction because of grease, that the spools just slide around and don't turn the rollers. This makes me think that it isn't needed at all. Before I go nuts with this, I am going to try a print with the filament just sitting on some pvc pipe (that does not rotate) or even bypassing the whole roller concept altogether. I am wondering if this is at all necessary. I will try a TPU print as an ultimate test of this idea.
Hmm, the top guide, which I printed in eSun PLA+ probably needs more support if, like me, you sit it on the windowsill for any length of time..! Not a design problem, just a consideration.
Nice! I have a zero power, passive, low cost idea for long term ,easy fast access, storage. Purchase a big plastic box with airtight lid, fill the floor with a few inches of Silica crystals that absorb water. Get another smaller box to house your filament spools made from any mesh. Make sure you have a few inches between the inner box and outer box, also fill space with Silica crystals, make sure the lid also has a layer of silica. A 50kg sac used for making Beer is a low cost bulk price. & wont pass the mesh. After use just but the spools back. seal lid,. Maybe to preserve the crystals for long term storage , can add a small vacuum pump, to remove the air from the box. If the crystals ever get to wet, just dry them in an oven or the sun. If you are worried some filaments get wet unopened? Just fill a bin with those crystals and bury your stock until needed. A clever designer would take that idea, and could build that around an ,in use, spool hooked up to a working machine. and the 6 x silica panels would be removable to easily remove for drying.
Hey great job on these boxes. I have now made 10 of them, and they seem great so far.. Do you have or know of any kind of adapter for the top of the box so you could stack them safely.
Just my 2 cents - From my experience when you're printing filament from the drybox (especially TPU) the amount of force required to pull the filament out is enough to cause extruder issues. The rollers under the filament need to be positioned closer together or print a third roller to position in the centre and raise that roller by about 2mm. If the spool would rather slip on the roller rather than the roller spin then the bearing may be a sealed type which adds a slight amount of friction. An ecosystem may be a good idea but test to see if the cereal holder will withstand the max temp you intend to use.
I don't print as much TPU as other materials, but I do have maybe 5 or 6 hours of TPU printing time so far with this setup and haven't seen any issues. I'll keep an eye on it, though. Thanks for the feedback.
Pretty cool design. However, I feel having a rewind system is mandatory for me, because Prusa XL has quite long filament lines to rewind into the spool, plus any extra lines from the shelf. For me, it's close to 2 meters of filament to rewind into the spool every time I decide to change.
Yeah, I think you're right. My filament path is about 1 meter and I don't have any issues, but 2 meters is likely too much filament to manually push back into the container.
@@gunplamark If you ever make a rewinding version, I will definitely try it. Although it might be quite an effort, because there's no center axle in this design.
The support is meant to be broken off before assembling. I included that version because I wasn't happy with the automatic supports that my slicer was generating.
Yep. For me, all the containers are still reading around 15% humidity and I haven't needed to replace or dry the desiccant. My spool of black ASA is nearly empty, and I'll probably swap out the desiccant when I put a new spool in that container.
Great video. Side note, I see you use the Eibos filament dryer. How do you like it? I’m thinking about picking one up myself and wanted to know your thoughts on it.
I think it's fine. I use it to dry spools of filament before placing them in the sealed plastic containers. It's the only filament dryer I own so I can't really compare it with other brands, but for me it works well and does its job.
Is there a way to vacuum out some air to help cut down on moisture? Or would that potentially cause the container to shrink a little and cause the filament not to roll well?
In my use of these so far, the amount of desiccant is enough to keep the interior at around 10% humidity for months, as long as I dry each new spool before putting it in the container. So I don't think that trying to remove air would make much difference.
no kidding, all I see is a set of 6 for 30 euro each! We need to get some competition over here. Maybe some similar box can also work well? Edit: if you keep digging you can find a seller that sells a set of 4 for 32 euro named bastwe eu. seems more reasonable
IKEA 365+ 10.6 litre box fits two spools. These products usually don't change substantially for decades, availability is across several continents and they're rarely if ever sold out, and there is no surge pricing that would shoot above MSRP.
I use a 10€ ikea box for 4 rolls, 10€ worth of dessicant in satchels a cheap hygrometer that says "LL", so low it cant measure. the rolls are mounted on an axis with roller bearings for each roll. Works perfectly and feeds directly in the print chamber.
@@mariotubelecce I think keeping a 2-4 spools on your printer to print from is entirely reasonable and potentially convenient. It's a decent compromise when good single boxes become scarce. If there was an easily nearly-worldwide accessible not overpriced single spool container, that would be nice. Most of these sellers who sell these cereal containers don't know or care what they're selling and change suppliers and designs fairly often, and they have surge pricing, and i'd personally rather deal with none of that.
I'm using a different design that's in the same cereal box. Hygrometer in the front, dessicant in the back. Keeps filament at about 11% in a room that hovers around 65% (my house has super high humidity this summer). Curious which is better.
neat! it seems like it'd be quite hard to push floppy tpu back into the box when you're done with it. And TPU is the thing I really need this for! Have you tried tpu in it?
A single LED will emit quite a bit of great if in a container, like these. It seems to me it would be enough to form a dryer using your idea. Just an observance.
Your Hygrometers are probably updating plenty fast, but I have that exact same dessicant, and it's not instant. Those little beads take time to pull the moisture out of the air. And isn't 999-perimeters a lot stronger than 100% infill?
Either perimeters or infill would be fine. I prefer the 100% infill setting because then you get alternating 45 degree angled layers in the interior of the axle.
If you use more powerful desicants like calcium chloride then you will never need to actively dry the filament with heat, risking degradation from repeated heat cycles. Furthermore this is counter intuitive but if you wanted to dehydrate the dry box well below 10% then COOL the box this will increase the relative humidity but it will help the desicant to absorb even more moisture and when the dry box warms back up to normal room temp, the RH will drop.
Great design, going to order parts and give one a try. Would you suggest printing each part on its own, or could I get away with printing all but the TPU rollers on one plate?
Actually, I made a mistake on the first message. Not the hydrometer but the desiccant holder. But that might not be that important. Anyway, you have a great design. Thank you
I hope the next version integrates a dryer system. I plan to build 6 of these soon. Have you tried the boxes from Skroam? They look the same on the outside and also have decent ratings.
@@gunplamark I am curious how much of a gap you add to your supports. They take minimal effort to remove but have almost no gap visually. I've been tinkering with them in my designs and they arent as clean as yours.
@@SpannMagoo For the built in supports on the base pieces, I left 0.2mm of vertical gap, so just a single layer assuming you're slicing with the most common layer height.
This is an FYI for anyone who might run into the problem of the support piece in the base-with-support_x2 STL file not slicing as a separate piece. Prusa based slicers don't recognize the gap between the support and the bottom of the roller platform. I had to use Ultimaker Cura to slice the base piece with support built in. I didn't try any other slicers after finding Cura worked.
I looked at these containers before. But the did not ship to the Netherlands at that time. I found them on the Dutch version of Amazon, unfortunately a bit more expensive. I ordered four of them to test them. Printing the parts for the first container now. Question: Is there a reason why you put the grips at the backside of the container.
The side of the container with the grips is slightly more narrow, and the filament guide with hygrometer fits better into the wider side of the container - and you want those facing the front.
Dessicant bin breaks the ribs very easy with a minimum finger pressure, they are too thin and fragile. It doesn't need to be so open, one slit, skip 2 will do, so you reinforce the whole body. A ring in middle of the height will also help. I am redesigning with a tube inside, wall of 2 or 3mm with holes, more resistant, make a union in FreeCAD with your stl and reprint. After I finish I can send you the STL. How do I send it to you?
You could always share them as a remix on Printables, or just check the remixes that others have already made. I'm pretty sure someone already made the change you're suggesting.
What strange timing, I just upgraded my printer to a X1C with AMS and I have a number of odd sized rolls that I wanted to use in my fifth slot so I made a try box with rollers out of the same box. You have to be very careful since prices can be crazy for the cereal boxes.
Pricing was mentioned in another comment as well. I was unaware of this, since I have a large collection of these containers that were all purchased over a year ago. I'll be on the lookout for a more cost effective container that's similarly sized.
@@gunplamark yeah… im still waiting for my printer but I think I’m gonna go with the tape, since the hole on top isn’t really needed. Are cardboard spools working good in these boxes?
@@sven49 I use a lot of Polymaker ABS and ASA. Those come on cardboard spools and they're great in these containers. But I do run them for a few hours in my heated filament dryer before putting them into the dry boxes, because even in their sealed packaging I find that they sometimes start out with some moisture content trapped in the spools.
Just gonna ask. When ya come aroudn the cost of 20 bucks for one, without work and print time. Isn't it just easyer/cheaper to buy a 20~30 bucks variant of the market?
So my question is, if your filament will absorb moisture from the air while on the spool, won’t your printed parts too? Therefore lowering the efficacy of your desiccant? Would everything not work better if there was no printed parts exposed to the open air?
The big problem with wet filament is that it doesn't behave well when you heat it up to print with it. Once parts are printed, I'm not too concerned about their humidity absorption properties. It is true that the parts exposed to outside air will absorb some moisture, but I think I prefer that for the convenience of being able to remove and refill the desiccant container without opening the dry box itself.
The bin is plastic too. The printed parts will absorb moisture however, once wet, they will "block" moisture from entering the dry box. Almost all plastic is both hygroscopic and water-permeable. Take something like nylon. It sucks up moisture well but it does not like to give that moisture back up without a bit of prodding. The air gap between the side of the container combined with the desiccant drying the air will overcome any humidity that might leak into the container. Add to the fact that the desiccant storage is at the point of entry for moisture if it came in through the printed part and I think it is a non-issue. It may shorten the life of the dessicant but I doubt it would even be to a measurable degree. This design really is the perfect storage solution. The only modification I would make is to replace those LR44s with a Li-PO or FePO cell so they actually last more than a few months. A 1000ma battery will last around a year (based on a 1-2 month life of a pair of LR44s).
Positioning the output at the top rear allows it to align properly with the filament guide at the top of the container, making it possible to push quite a bit of filament back into the container when you're done using the filament. I don't want to be opening the container to manually roll the excess filament back in.
13:00 ... did you just call Imperials... Freedom Units...? Great video and solution for a dry box storage system! I'd give you many thumbs up, but my European slavery units only allow me to give 1 thumbs up...
Hah, yeah. I've heard them called freedom units by a few other people and I sometimes use that as a joking and somewhat derogatory term because I'd much prefer to just use metric for everything.
I don't have any Bamboo filament, so I can't confirm this for you. If anyone out there has tried these containers with Bamboo Labs spools, please let us know if they fit.
@@gunplamark I made the parts for the cereal box, but after setting the whole thing up, the Bamboo spools simply don't fit! The part that holds the hydrometer rubs on the spool and the spool rubs on the container sides. All it really needs is a larger container.
Well, that's annoying. The largest spools I have are those plastic ones that Atomic Filament uses, and they just barely fit. I guess the Bamboo ones are even bigger.
could u maby provide some cat files i want to modify ur design to containers wich have a little indent at the front and i also use another roller system wich just works with some bowden tube and i also use round hygrometers i also not gona upload the the modify thing if u dont want it
I like the overall storage design but i would add more desiccant. You still have the center of the filament roll. Also you will get air movement/ diffusion through the 3d printed cap. 3d prints are not water or air proof. So I would keep that in mind if you place these in a very humid environment. You should also show how it rolls. Lots of these always have rolling problems. I think using the top cap as the base might help with that.
No rolling issues with these so far. As I mentioned in the video, I think printing the roller parts with TPU helps to provide better friction between the spool and the rollers, resulting in a smoother roll. I'll keep an eye on the humidity levels in these guys over the next few months and report back if it looks like additional desiccant is needed, or if I think humidity is getting inside the containers through the bowden coupler. After several weeks of use, my current thought is that they're going to be fine as long as I always make sure to dry each spool really well before initially putting it into the container.
I like this design a lot. I have no experience yet, but seems like the printed cap is either close enough to airtight, or could easily be made so with a coat of paint or clear-coat. His data suggests they’re pretty good as-is. I have a couple of PolyMaker bins, they’re well-thought out, but expensive. This seems to capture much of that idea for 1/3 the cost. NOTE: There are designs out there to make adapters allowing the PolyMaker dryer unit to be attached to such bins, so best of both worlds :)
About the rolling issue. He used and recommended 608 RS2 bearings. The RS@ means they have a rubber seal on both sides. The seals aren't necessary and add friction. You can order 608 ZZ bearings. These are shielded instead of sealed. They have less friction. I got a set of 24 for $6.50. Or, best of all, you can use unshielded 608 bearings. They have the least friction and being in a sealed container don't really need to be sealed. Maybe after 5-10 years or so you might need to clean them. They have the least friction. Look for fidget spinner bearings. Ironically these are slightly more expensive because there is less demand for them, but not much.
Hi, as it is a great idea and design, I ordered all parts and start printing (PTEG on my Ender-3 v2 and Cura). I'm a novize in 3D Printig, so be patient with me! The base was easy to print and the bearings snap in like a charme. But if I print the desiccant-bin, it messed up. Most probably because my settings. Out of my view, the leveling of my printer is good and it prints all test layers nice and smooth. But my printer struggles whith the small long drop-form slots at the bottom. Can you share the important slicer settigs here? Does anyone else had such problems and solved it? Or could it be that Cura is not able to slice such filigran slots? I'm a bit helpless here. New Status: Seems I found the problem. The wall thickness of 0.8 was too much. I set it to 0.4 and so far it is now printing in a much better quality. (I'm just at Layer 3! 🙂 )
Yeah, that part is designed to print with 0.2 layer height and 0.4 line width, using a 0.4mm nozzle. Larger nozzles might have an issue with the small openings. If you're still having trouble you could check out some of the remixes of my design that people have posted on Printables. I think a few of them included versions of the desiccant bin that are redesigned for easier printing.
@@gunplamark Hi, I use 0.2 Layer and the 0.4 Nozzle, but my Slicer settings were 0.8 Wall thickness. Setting it to 0.4 makes it. I just finished my first box! And I like it. 🙂But I did some changes. I will try to create a remix report in Printables.
Hey Mark! Saw your video this morning and thought it was a great idea! I'll probably try and make it myself. Later in the day I came across another video that you might be interested in: ruclips.net/user/shorts4r3wGYqxg-8?si=eS5jh2knk9ajg2-K A modular heating/drybox system! Seems like a DIY version is needed ;)
I like this and appreciate the work you've put into it. I will be using most of your idea ;-) as I prefer not (at the moment, anyway) to print from the box as I have a AMS from my Bambu P1S, but I like the active heating you referred to towards the end. I don't have the time, ingenuity or drive to do this myself, so looking forward to your suggestions, but I thought about using a small, external dehumidifier and trunking to form a closed circuit air system within the box - or several boxes - that would extract moisture from within the boxes without heating the air. Just a thought..!
Hi, so my concern is I am assembling these, the bearings you recomended are quite oily to the touch. One of the other sellers of identical looking bearings says this: “Note: Ball bearings are lubricated with imported grease in our factory, please wash thoroughly after contact” . My concerns are: 1) damage to the filiment from the oil 2) effect on the printing process 3) transfer of toxins to the resulting printed toy. I use steel nozzels so there is no brass for example, and I would hate to introduce something that is not healthy by accident. 😊
1. Why do you need to label the filament ? It´s a transparent box you can read the label inside 2. Cheap heating solution would be the heated build plate of your printer. Simply print a plate with a fan and place it on the heated build plate 3. I wouldn´t use roller bearings, it adds parts and costs use some PTFE tube or do just without bearings you need a little bit of friction or the filament can become tangled Otherwise it´s a great idea and well done sharing with the community.
1. When the containers are lined up on my shelf I can't see the labels inside, so having those tags on the front helps me to grab the one I'm looking for. 2. I've considered that as an option, in addition to a few other heating methods. I'll have to do some testing to see what works best. 3. In my experience the bearings are necessary for smooth movement. Without them, certain types of spools bind up, hit the back of the container, and stop turning completely.
@@gunplamark 1. Fair eough. 2. Sound good, I am eager to see what you will come up with. 3. I have never had this experience, quiet the opposite, but if you say you need them, it´s up to you. I rather use PTFE tube, this way the spool does not turn too much and unspools. 4. The only thing i would like to add is a filament dry box which I can install on my printer. My printer is in an enclosure and the spool holder is on top to the side ( closer to center of garavity) so I would need a drybox mounted n the same position not somewhere to the side. Otherwise it increases the footprint of the machine.
A few of you have noted that the 608 bearings I used have quite a lot of friction. I prefer this style, but if you're after something that rolls more easily I've linked to a second option in the video description.
And while I'm here, huge thanks to everyone who built these boxes and has sent me feedback and suggestions on the design. I really do appreciate it!
The friction is most likely just thick grease. For this application you can clean out the grease with something like brake cleaner, and put in some lighter grease, or even some spray lubricant. With these speeds the bearings will never wear out, not even when used dry. The lubricant mainly acts like a rust preventer, even though that's not that important in a 10% RH environment either.
@@timderks5960 > The friction is most likely just thick grease
And/or seal drag
Here's what I did to address the packed grease bearings:
1. Popped off the bearing shields
2. Cleaned out the existing grease with brake cleaner (not really needed because the next step should take care of cleaning it out a little)
3. Soaked the bearings with WD40
4. Printed hard plastic (ABS/ASA/PLA etc) instead of TPU rollers. I found that using TPU rollers added slightly more drag and friction using cardboard spools. Using hard plastic roller let the cardboard slide a little, thus causing less binding and friction
Nice video, the only thing I can add is that a magnet glued to the side of the spool so you can rewind the spool with another magnet outside the container 😊
I'm planning on trying that this weekend, I've made about 10 of these dry boxes and they are great but rewinding is the only issue I've had. Have you tried the magnet method?
I'm new to 3d printing and really appreciate you sharing the models for this. I was looking at so many different solutions for storage, but these really spoke to me! They went together well, and I can't argue with the results. After 24 hours the empty ones I prepared went from 55%+ humidity down to sub 20.
Great job! Making an adapter for it to sit on the polymaker dryer would be a solid win.
I made this pretty much as offered. I thought it was wonderful and worked pretty well.
Some feedback:
-- I used 608 ZZ bearings instead of 608 2SR for less rolling friction. For even less friction you can even use unshielded bearings as this is in an enclosed clean space.
-- Be very careful drilling the top hole. I was careful but some still cracked. I think it is from stresses in the plastic at the fill port.
-- I modified the coupler cap to be easier to remove. Where the "handle" meets the thin tube I changed it to have a shoulder for added space then a cone section for even more space. You can easily remove the cap with one hand.
-- Maybe it's my printer (Bambu A-1 Mini) but I had clearance issues with the roller shafts. I had to sand them all. But other than that the fit and function were perfect. ( I made the rollers from PLA as I don't have any TPU.)
--DO NOT buy the silica gel that is clear then only has a small amount of color-changing indicator beads. It is very hard to see them through the basket. I might try printing in white, but just buy the ones he listed.
-- I was really surprised at how effective the silica beads are! They take an empty box from 60% humidity to 12% in an hour!
-- Has anyone with an A-! Mini made one of these? Have you experimented with having the filament come out at the bottom? Or by moving the Bowden tube directly from the printer to the dry box? I don't know the best orientation to use this in!
Thank you for the great design and for making it affordable. Good work!
I haven't printed this yet but will be soon. Would you be willing to share the couple cap STL you designed?
I would also like to have the redesigned cap if you are willing to share it please and thank you.
I will have the filament coming out of the top for my P1P…. But that’s quite an obvious change.
@@GHOSTYAIRO I tried posting a link but it got removed. It is on the same site as the original dry box, model 995277.
@@iceisrawr I tried posting a link but it got removed. It is on the same site as the original dry box, model 995277.
Hello friend, I found that if you will print this on Bambu Lab A1 unit, both bottom parts fit at once on print bed, you can use the Bambu Lab Studio (previous to print) overlap them a little bit, merge them and print at once as a single piece, it saves time and filament on printing.
I print few of those (thanks), but still working on a different support for the base two overpasses instead of the support block. For some reason when printing with PET-G those blocks are almost impossible to remove.
Other, I installed the bowden coupler on the top, 1/4 from one edge, so the filament gets out vertically, and I shorten the hygrometer holder arm just to hold the indicator, eliminating the long bottom curved (I don't feel any difference). The box(es) stay aside the printer, it is better way to exit vertical.
I also made a tube like a medicine bottle with cap (full of narrow slits), a bit of smaller diameter, 50% full of silica gel, insert into the spool hole, it turns slow along with the spool and move the silica. With that it reaches 14% moisture. Have few of those tubes ready, bake them whenever empty the 1kg spool. Always fresh silica gel.
I use a center core desecant holder that just screws into the hole in the center of the filament spool. That way, if you build your active heater, you could just pop off the lid opening and put it on the heater, then pop the lid back on when it's done.
I would definitely be interested in a drying system to work with these. I just started assembling my dry boxes. Thanks so much for your design!!
Very cool solution. Thank you
Thank you very much for a great design and tutorial. I will be doing a slightly improved version of your box. I plan to add two extra holes at the bottom of the box with sealed caps to fit the Polymaker Polydryer. This will still give me plenty of dry boxes for all my filaments but at a more affordable price than buying an extra box for each filament I want to store.
i wish id have seen this video a month ago before i started prototyping my own version of this... i ended up drilling out two middle hole for a bearing roller and attatching a fan and 5ohm resistor for a bit of mild heating. powered by microusb. all attached to the lid. doing it all upside down is great but you have to remove the filament from the tube if you want to uncap it.
had to make like 6 different sized rollers for different hole sizes. cheaped out and just poured dessicant beads into the bottom.
now I'm going to prototype a version that uses 2 nested containers for insulation and i can put the electronics in the gap.
Just did the print with the recommened items and it worked great. Printing out all my ABS tags now. Thank you, way cheaper than buying the units.
Great design. I’m finally getting my moisture sensitive filaments out of dry bags and easier to use. I’ll second what someone else said about the bearings. The first 6 dry boxes I used the 2rs bearings and had to pop the dust covers off and degrease them. A small dab of graphite and they are silky smooth. I was getting way too much drag before.
I am soooooo glad you made this video. I have assembled about 36 filament driers from the previous video you mentioned. The most common issue I had with those, is when I opened the top of the container, and the cap for the desiccant/hygrometer holder would pop off, causing desiccant to run wild all over the room. This looks like it will eliminate that problem. On a side note, I loved hearing you say "Freedom Units", I love that phrase. There are two types of Countries on this planet, those that have put a man on the Moon, and those that use the metric system. MURICA!!!!!!!! 🎇🎆🎇🎆🎇🎆🎇🎆
Yeah, I had that same problem with some of my older desiccant bins popping open. I'm enjoying this new system a lot more as I continue to replace the old bins.
And I tend to use the term "freedom units" in a joking way, because I really do prefer metric and wish we could just use it everywhere.
So you use 68thou 9 tenths filament 🤔😁
Printed 12x Dry Boxes!! Thank you so much for your contribution to this project. Love the upside down orientation. If you progress the agenda to install a heater/fan that fits in the desiccant port… for an active heating/drying system let me know!!
This is a super elegant solution - nicely done!!
I liked your video. As for a heater dryer, I think you could probably just set the unit fully loaded with filament and dessicant in the sun for a little while. It will heat up and the dessicant will absorb the moisture.
You mentioned metric vs Freedom units. I think I can muddy the waters for you a little more than that. Those bowden tube entry gromets are sold as M10 but the thread on them is actually a G1/8 BSPP - as are a lot of threads that are on parts that were originally pneumatic parts. This is only really useful if you want to either tap the hole or model the thread in the 'rocket' part. The correct tap drill size you might actually have as it's 11/32 (about 8.8mm).
I've just finished printing parts for a system the 'right' way round....but now I'm wondering if a 50-50 mix of the two would let me fit them closer together and get more on a shelf.
Love this! Thank you so much... I'm a newbie to 3D Printing and this is exactly what I was looking for. Nice and easy project, fun to make!
Fantastic! A much sturdier option than the roller system for these boxes I’ve been using. Thank you for the great redo! I have a Polydryer and hate it. The storage box they use was a good, although poorly set up, idea. These cereal boxes have worked very well for me and this build makes them even better!
Nice. Really slick implementation.
Thank you for sharing your ideas. I have 60 of those boxes and will definitively give it a try. One at a time :)
One thing to ease the drilling is to use a step drill. They are cheap and do an excellent job on plastic.
P.S. There is no blank tag on printables.
Good suggestion. If I'm going to make a lot more of these, a step drill bit would be worth looking into.
Great video Mark, thanks for sharing your project and information!
In reference to your workspace, if you have AC in the room and the humidity is too high, there are solutions to help lower it if this space is actually a seperate room in your garage. A decent exterior door that is made to be waterproof with seals, instead of using an interior door, would help quite a bit. Again this assumes this is a seperate room within your garage. Next are the wall, ceiling, and floor. They make moisture barrier concrete sealer if you have a concrete floor. If you have carpet over the floor, it makes sense to remove the carpet, seal the floor, then reinstall the carpet. They also make moisture barrier paint that can be applied to both the walls and ceiling, which should also help the intrusion of water vapor into your workspace. Once you have sealed the room from water vapor from external sources, your air conditioner should easily reduce the moisture in that space to below 40, or even 30%, possibly more, depending on how well the room is treated. Any hear generated in the room will cause the AC to run even more, further reduce its moisture content.
Thanks for all the suggestions. One of the four "walls" of the studio is actually the garage door, so unfortunately there's only so much I can do to keep the humidity away.
I really love this, and will probably be using it for building a DIY MMU (tradrack). I like the drop-in desiccant, versus the glue-in one the other guy did, but the innovation of doing the lid on bottom, was a really cool thing the other guy did, and I like what you've done to improve it. Good work
Thanks! And I agree... the idea to flip the container upside down was the thing that unlocked a lot of new possibilities for me, and is the key thing that makes this all work so well.
Given that humid air is less dense than dryer air, I would store these such that the silica gel is up top. I would install the hygrometer upside down then. I wonder if that would actually make a perceivable change. Anyone who built it try to store it upside down and let us know!
I might also design a different capped filament outlet so I don't need to buy PTFE tubes or their fittings. Over all this looks super elegant and I can't wait for the parts to arrive so I can build it. Thanks for the great video!
Air in a closed system of this size is not going to have any measurable variation in humidity from top to bottom of the chamber.
We have a similar setup. I was considering doing the active cooling trick by using a special "lid" for the Eibos EasDry (I have the same model) which has the connection ports (for two containers, with the Eibos getting feet on the backside and being positioned lid up) -- I'm working on an ESP32 upgrade for that to add active temp/humidity logic to it first, I just need to finish the prototype.
You are a gentleman and a scholar! This is so great, I've been eyeing the PolyBox system but they are hard to get where I live. Would LOVE to see the active attachment version. My only concerns with this design are with the slack potentially tangling, and with the cap not being air tight. I see that you have worked to address both of these issues, just my impression from the video.
Ha! I'm neither a gentleman nor a scholar... just a guy who likes to make things. But thanks for the kind words, and for the feedback.
If you do in the future decide to modify these to do the active drying, remember that airflow and having some place for the moisture to escape is much more important for effective drying than the heat is. So to have success on that project, ensure you have both a way to ensure good air circulation in the container and a way for the moist air to escape. Both of these could probably be aided by building a vent into the top of the container with some kind of method to seal it when it is not actively drying.
The inlet and vent could be done through the same hole if the inlet air flow is directed well enough via a baffle or two.
Yeah, this was my initial thought as well... create a circulating airflow through the one big opening. Of course I'll need to do some testing to see how effective this approach can be.
Just ordered the parts for making 6 of the dry boxes. Thanks for sharing the idea.
Too funny - my bro and I literally just designed almost this same system yesterday over the phone, and I even already had the same Wildone cereal boxes LOL
So OBVIOUSLY a great idea! TY for the STLs - you just saved us a lot of time!
I ordered all the parts and am currently printing 6 of these sets. Eventually will do all 18 that I ordered and will help keep some dry. Testing soon.
Very cool. Thanks for the walk through.
this is a pretty cool project. one thing that i might mention though is that, in your old design you had the desiccant in the top. there's one reason in particular that this was the better design. specifically because humid air is less dense than dry air, and because of that, it rises. in the new design you are in essence drying the dry air with the desiccant in the bottom, while the filament 'soaks' in the upside down 'bucket' full of humid air....
What I've found in practice is that since the new design allows me to open the container exactly once to load a new spool of filament and then never open it again for the lifetime of that spool, the location of the desiccant is less important. At least for my use case, there is enough desiccant in the bin to dry out the interior of the container and keep it dry until I've used up the spool and it's time to load a new one.
I printed the rollers in TPU. That way, the spool has more grip than on hard plastic. I printed the filament stop also in tpu. A bit of flex gives better fit (I think).
I too started out with roller bearings, however it is best to have a little bit of friction otherwise the roll might unwind in a bad way. Just use some PTFE tubing for the contact surface instead.
Great design. Just a thought. Would there be a way to combine the filament tag holder to be that part of the “wasted” support material you built in. Would be material efficient and a cleaver way to reduce waste plastic
Maybe. Good suggestion, and I'll look into it.
@@gunplamark just want to add, I’ve made 6 of these so far and ordering another set of containers to make more, I’ve tried other filament storage methods in the past and this really is a fantastic solution. Going to be putting all of my loose rolls in these from now on, having them in Individual containers ready to print is so much easier than having mass storage in totes and compromising the humidity level everytime you just need one of the spools out. I added hot glue over the top screw and over around the coupler exit to reduce air potentially entering and have most my rolls sitting around 10-15% in what is normally a 45% humidity room.
New to this, your solution looks really affordable !!
By the way, I really more interested by your wall of Gundams, what is the honeycomb grid do you use and how do you attach them to it ?
Small weak magnet attached to the spool on the side would enable you to roll back the filament onto the spool from outside with another magnet without having to open the box. Spacing between spool and box should not be too far so that magnet would pull the spool down from the bearings.
Great design, Boxes ordered… one tiny change I will, use a bit of blocked off Bowden tube to seal the filament hole, printed stop is too likely to get knocked/sheared off.
Your approach and design is outstanding. It addresses most all of the concerns and so forth. When it comes to active drying if needed what about cutting an opening out of the other end of the base. In that way one would not need to remove the hydrometer while actively drying. And we could design a TPU plug for the hole when not actively drying.
Just a thought. But really you have a great design here, thank you for all the effort you put into this video. Including all the links, it is appreciated.
That approach could work as well. I'm still not sure whether an active drying solution is going to be something I need. I tend to print enough (and with only a few colors) that I use up spools within a few months after opening them, so I'm thinking that the current system will keep everything dry enough for my use case.
Just place it on the heated build plate and add a fan....
@@sierraecho884 Good idea I hadn't thought of that. Thank you.
@@glennfelpel9785 You are welcome =)
Maybe another desiccant holder under the other side, under the roller axle bracket? Can't have too much. Nice enhancement over the original with regards to the desiccant bin and improved roller design with more 3d printed parts.
Works great! Thank you so much for sharing! 😃
great solution, I live in the Mohave desert but monsoon season is coming and it can get humid.
I currently have 10 open spools that I try to dry before use. Some are in resealable bags with small descant pouches in them. Imma gonna try it. It could save a lot of time and possibly filament. Thanks
FWIW, you can add/change the description to the older vid and to add a link to this vid. Or add/change a card for a link there too.
You could probably change the description to say that this video exists on your older one. Great solution, I will definitely be seeing if I can source some containers.
Not sure why I didn't think to do that, so thanks for the good idea.
Very nice, thank you and greetings from Germany.
thanks for sharing this amazing design
I use this setup on my PPS-CF and PET type of filaments, works great thanks...
Great idea, thank you.
I LOVE the idea of this, but my printers are struggling with printing the thin base even with a brim. The petg flexes and will break the part loose, Is there any way to adjust the walls to be a bit thicker?
I see comments about sealed bearings having too much friction because of grease, that the spools just slide around and don't turn the rollers. This makes me think that it isn't needed at all. Before I go nuts with this, I am going to try a print with the filament just sitting on some pvc pipe (that does not rotate) or even bypassing the whole roller concept altogether. I am wondering if this is at all necessary. I will try a TPU print as an ultimate test of this idea.
Hmm, the top guide, which I printed in eSun PLA+ probably needs more support if, like me, you sit it on the windowsill for any length of time..!
Not a design problem, just a consideration.
Nice! I have a zero power, passive, low cost idea for long term ,easy fast access, storage. Purchase a big plastic box with airtight lid, fill the floor with a few inches of Silica crystals that absorb water. Get another smaller box to house your filament spools made from any mesh. Make sure you have a few inches between the inner box and outer box, also fill space with Silica crystals, make sure the lid also has a layer of silica. A 50kg sac used for making Beer is a low cost bulk price. & wont pass the mesh. After use just but the spools back. seal lid,. Maybe to preserve the crystals for long term storage , can add a small vacuum pump, to remove the air from the box. If the crystals ever get to wet, just dry them in an oven or the sun. If you are worried some filaments get wet unopened? Just fill a bin with those crystals and bury your stock until needed. A clever designer would take that idea, and could build that around an ,in use, spool hooked up to a working machine. and the 6 x silica panels would be removable to easily remove for drying.
Hey great job on these boxes. I have now made 10 of them, and they seem great so far.. Do you have or know of any kind of adapter for the top of the box so you could stack them safely.
I'm working on a part that will allow them to slot into a peg board. I hadn't thought about stacking, but that's a great idea. I'll look into it.
Nice! Gotta try this out.
Just my 2 cents - From my experience when you're printing filament from the drybox (especially TPU) the amount of force required to pull the filament out is enough to cause extruder issues. The rollers under the filament need to be positioned closer together or print a third roller to position in the centre and raise that roller by about 2mm. If the spool would rather slip on the roller rather than the roller spin then the bearing may be a sealed type which adds a slight amount of friction. An ecosystem may be a good idea but test to see if the cereal holder will withstand the max temp you intend to use.
I don't print as much TPU as other materials, but I do have maybe 5 or 6 hours of TPU printing time so far with this setup and haven't seen any issues. I'll keep an eye on it, though. Thanks for the feedback.
Pretty cool design. However, I feel having a rewind system is mandatory for me, because Prusa XL has quite long filament lines to rewind into the spool, plus any extra lines from the shelf. For me, it's close to 2 meters of filament to rewind into the spool every time I decide to change.
Yeah, I think you're right. My filament path is about 1 meter and I don't have any issues, but 2 meters is likely too much filament to manually push back into the container.
@@gunplamark If you ever make a rewinding version, I will definitely try it. Although it might be quite an effort, because there's no center axle in this design.
Hi, using the base with the square support, you can not use your desiccant bin, or am I missing something? thanks
The support is meant to be broken off before assembling. I included that version because I wasn't happy with the automatic supports that my slicer was generating.
So, are your desiccant beads still nice and orange after a month or so? What about the hygrometer readings?
Yep. For me, all the containers are still reading around 15% humidity and I haven't needed to replace or dry the desiccant. My spool of black ASA is nearly empty, and I'll probably swap out the desiccant when I put a new spool in that container.
@@gunplamark thanks for replying. This is good to hear! I will be creating some boxes here in the near future.
Great video. Side note, I see you use the Eibos filament dryer. How do you like it? I’m thinking about picking one up myself and wanted to know your thoughts on it.
I think it's fine. I use it to dry spools of filament before placing them in the sealed plastic containers. It's the only filament dryer I own so I can't really compare it with other brands, but for me it works well and does its job.
Is there a way to vacuum out some air to help cut down on moisture? Or would that potentially cause the container to shrink a little and cause the filament not to roll well?
In my use of these so far, the amount of desiccant is enough to keep the interior at around 10% humidity for months, as long as I dry each new spool before putting it in the container. So I don't think that trying to remove air would make much difference.
@@gunplamark thank you. I just got the bins in the other day. Just need to start printing the dessicant containers
Thanks for sharing. I think I will make some of these. 🙂
In europe those box sky rocketed to 65€ for 6.The seller makes a lot of money on 3D printing. It's important not to buy them to get him back in line.
no kidding, all I see is a set of 6 for 30 euro each! We need to get some competition over here. Maybe some similar box can also work well?
Edit: if you keep digging you can find a seller that sells a set of 4 for 32 euro named bastwe eu. seems more reasonable
IKEA 365+ 10.6 litre box fits two spools. These products usually don't change substantially for decades, availability is across several continents and they're rarely if ever sold out, and there is no surge pricing that would shoot above MSRP.
I use a 10€ ikea box for 4 rolls, 10€ worth of dessicant in satchels a cheap hygrometer that says "LL", so low it cant measure. the rolls are mounted on an axis with roller bearings for each roll. Works perfectly and feeds directly in the print chamber.
The main advanced of single spool box is portability and printing directly from that, but for storage ikea boxes or similar would do the job 100%
@@mariotubelecce I think keeping a 2-4 spools on your printer to print from is entirely reasonable and potentially convenient. It's a decent compromise when good single boxes become scarce. If there was an easily nearly-worldwide accessible not overpriced single spool container, that would be nice. Most of these sellers who sell these cereal containers don't know or care what they're selling and change suppliers and designs fairly often, and they have surge pricing, and i'd personally rather deal with none of that.
Best one so far ! so so cool !
I'm using a different design that's in the same cereal box. Hygrometer in the front, dessicant in the back. Keeps filament at about 11% in a room that hovers around 65% (my house has super high humidity this summer). Curious which is better.
neat! it seems like it'd be quite hard to push floppy tpu back into the box when you're done with it. And TPU is the thing I really need this for! Have you tried tpu in it?
Yes. My spool of black TPU that I used to print the roller parts is in one of these containers. I haven't had any problems pushing excess back in.
I love this. Well done.
A single LED will emit quite a bit of great if in a container, like these. It seems to me it would be enough to form a dryer using your idea. Just an observance.
Your Hygrometers are probably updating plenty fast, but I have that exact same dessicant, and it's not instant.
Those little beads take time to pull the moisture out of the air.
And isn't 999-perimeters a lot stronger than 100% infill?
Either perimeters or infill would be fine. I prefer the 100% infill setting because then you get alternating 45 degree angled layers in the interior of the axle.
If you use more powerful desicants like calcium chloride then you will never need to actively dry the filament with heat, risking degradation from repeated heat cycles.
Furthermore this is counter intuitive but if you wanted to dehydrate the dry box well below 10% then COOL the box this will increase the relative humidity but it will help the desicant to absorb even more moisture and when the dry box warms back up to normal room temp, the RH will drop.
Great design, going to order parts and give one a try. Would you suggest printing each part on its own, or could I get away with printing all but the TPU rollers on one plate?
I guess it depends on the printer you're using, but I've been printing all the parts for each container at once on my 350mm Voron 2.4.
@@gunplamark Guess there is only one way to find out, I'll give it a go on my A1.
Actually, I made a mistake on the first message. Not the hydrometer but the desiccant holder. But that might not be that important. Anyway, you have a great design. Thank you
I hope the next version integrates a dryer system. I plan to build 6 of these soon. Have you tried the boxes from Skroam? They look the same on the outside and also have decent ratings.
Another idea is make the desiccant more visible to the outside.
I haven't tried that brand of containers, but from the product images I found they look identical to the containers that I use.
@@gunplamark I will pick them up today and report back once I get the first built. I started printing the parts last night.
@@gunplamark I am curious how much of a gap you add to your supports. They take minimal effort to remove but have almost no gap visually. I've been tinkering with them in my designs and they arent as clean as yours.
@@SpannMagoo For the built in supports on the base pieces, I left 0.2mm of vertical gap, so just a single layer assuming you're slicing with the most common layer height.
nice work
This is an FYI for anyone who might run into the problem of the support piece in the base-with-support_x2 STL file not slicing as a separate piece. Prusa based slicers don't recognize the gap between the support and the bottom of the roller platform. I had to use Ultimaker Cura to slice the base piece with support built in. I didn't try any other slicers after finding Cura worked.
I looked at these containers before. But the did not ship to the Netherlands at that time. I found them on the Dutch version of Amazon, unfortunately a bit more expensive. I ordered four of them to test them. Printing the parts for the first container now. Question: Is there a reason why you put the grips at the backside of the container.
The side of the container with the grips is slightly more narrow, and the filament guide with hygrometer fits better into the wider side of the container - and you want those facing the front.
@@gunplamark Thanks
Dessicant bin breaks the ribs very easy with a minimum finger pressure, they are too thin and fragile. It doesn't need to be so open, one slit, skip 2 will do, so you reinforce the whole body. A ring in middle of the height will also help. I am redesigning with a tube inside, wall of 2 or 3mm with holes, more resistant, make a union in FreeCAD with your stl and reprint. After I finish I can send you the STL. How do I send it to you?
You could always share them as a remix on Printables, or just check the remixes that others have already made. I'm pretty sure someone already made the change you're suggesting.
What strange timing, I just upgraded my printer to a X1C with AMS and I have a number of odd sized rolls that I wanted to use in my fifth slot so I made a try box with rollers out of the same box. You have to be very careful since prices can be crazy for the cereal boxes.
Pricing was mentioned in another comment as well. I was unaware of this, since I have a large collection of these containers that were all purchased over a year ago. I'll be on the lookout for a more cost effective container that's similarly sized.
Why don’t use double sided tape instead of the screw on top for the hygrometer?
That would work as well. I happen to have a lot of M3 screws on hand and not much double sided tape, so using screws was my preference.
@@gunplamark yeah… im still waiting for my printer but I think I’m gonna go with the tape, since the hole on top isn’t really needed. Are cardboard spools working good in these boxes?
@@sven49 I use a lot of Polymaker ABS and ASA. Those come on cardboard spools and they're great in these containers. But I do run them for a few hours in my heated filament dryer before putting them into the dry boxes, because even in their sealed packaging I find that they sometimes start out with some moisture content trapped in the spools.
Just gonna ask.
When ya come aroudn the cost of 20 bucks for one, without work and print time.
Isn't it just easyer/cheaper to buy a 20~30 bucks variant of the market?
Prices are changing all the time, but when I purchased all the parts it came out to around $7 per dry box for me.
So my question is, if your filament will absorb moisture from the air while on the spool, won’t your printed parts too? Therefore lowering the efficacy of your desiccant? Would everything not work better if there was no printed parts exposed to the open air?
The big problem with wet filament is that it doesn't behave well when you heat it up to print with it. Once parts are printed, I'm not too concerned about their humidity absorption properties. It is true that the parts exposed to outside air will absorb some moisture, but I think I prefer that for the convenience of being able to remove and refill the desiccant container without opening the dry box itself.
@@gunplamark HiPS instead ABS/ASA. The less hygroscopic material for FDM printing. Gorgeous matt finishing!
The bin is plastic too. The printed parts will absorb moisture however, once wet, they will "block" moisture from entering the dry box. Almost all plastic is both hygroscopic and water-permeable. Take something like nylon. It sucks up moisture well but it does not like to give that moisture back up without a bit of prodding. The air gap between the side of the container combined with the desiccant drying the air will overcome any humidity that might leak into the container. Add to the fact that the desiccant storage is at the point of entry for moisture if it came in through the printed part and I think it is a non-issue. It may shorten the life of the dessicant but I doubt it would even be to a measurable degree. This design really is the perfect storage solution. The only modification I would make is to replace those LR44s with a Li-PO or FePO cell so they actually last more than a few months. A 1000ma battery will last around a year (based on a 1-2 month life of a pair of LR44s).
is there any reason that the output for the container cant be moved to the bottom about where the name tag is if the fillament goes down to the front?
Positioning the output at the top rear allows it to align properly with the filament guide at the top of the container, making it possible to push quite a bit of filament back into the container when you're done using the filament. I don't want to be opening the container to manually roll the excess filament back in.
13:00 ... did you just call Imperials... Freedom Units...?
Great video and solution for a dry box storage system! I'd give you many thumbs up, but my European slavery units only allow me to give 1 thumbs up...
Hah, yeah. I've heard them called freedom units by a few other people and I sometimes use that as a joking and somewhat derogatory term because I'd much prefer to just use metric for everything.
Will a Bamboo Labs spool's fit in the containers? I ask, because I had purchased some that the spool doesn't fit and I had to return them.
I don't have any Bamboo filament, so I can't confirm this for you. If anyone out there has tried these containers with Bamboo Labs spools, please let us know if they fit.
@@gunplamark Ok thanks for responding! I ordered the parts, so when they arrive, I'll know! Worst case is I can just send them back.
@@gunplamark I made the parts for the cereal box, but after setting the whole thing up, the Bamboo spools simply don't fit! The part that holds the hydrometer rubs on the spool and the spool rubs on the container sides. All it really needs is a larger container.
Well, that's annoying. The largest spools I have are those plastic ones that Atomic Filament uses, and they just barely fit. I guess the Bamboo ones are even bigger.
could u maby provide some cat files i want to modify ur design to containers wich have a little indent at the front and i also use another roller system wich just works with some bowden tube and i also use round hygrometers
i also not gona upload the the modify thing if u dont want it
I like the overall storage design but i would add more desiccant. You still have the center of the filament roll. Also you will get air movement/ diffusion through the 3d printed cap. 3d prints are not water or air proof. So I would keep that in mind if you place these in a very humid environment. You should also show how it rolls. Lots of these always have rolling problems. I think using the top cap as the base might help with that.
I really like the polymaker style drier that would be very cool.
No rolling issues with these so far. As I mentioned in the video, I think printing the roller parts with TPU helps to provide better friction between the spool and the rollers, resulting in a smoother roll.
I'll keep an eye on the humidity levels in these guys over the next few months and report back if it looks like additional desiccant is needed, or if I think humidity is getting inside the containers through the bowden coupler. After several weeks of use, my current thought is that they're going to be fine as long as I always make sure to dry each spool really well before initially putting it into the container.
@@gunplamark Not the bowden coupler but the 3d printed plug that the desiccant sits in.
I will have to get TPU working on my printer now.
I like this design a lot. I have no experience yet, but seems like the printed cap is either close enough to airtight, or could easily be made so with a coat of paint or clear-coat. His data suggests they’re pretty good as-is.
I have a couple of PolyMaker bins, they’re well-thought out, but expensive. This seems to capture much of that idea for 1/3 the cost.
NOTE: There are designs out there to make adapters allowing the PolyMaker dryer unit to be attached to such bins, so best of both worlds :)
About the rolling issue. He used and recommended 608 RS2 bearings. The RS@ means they have a rubber seal on both sides. The seals aren't necessary and add friction. You can order 608 ZZ bearings. These are shielded instead of sealed. They have less friction. I got a set of 24 for $6.50. Or, best of all, you can use unshielded 608 bearings. They have the least friction and being in a sealed container don't really need to be sealed. Maybe after 5-10 years or so you might need to clean them. They have the least friction. Look for fidget spinner bearings. Ironically these are slightly more expensive because there is less demand for them, but not much.
Hi, as it is a great idea and design, I ordered all parts and start printing (PTEG on my Ender-3 v2 and Cura). I'm a novize in 3D Printig, so be patient with me!
The base was easy to print and the bearings snap in like a charme.
But if I print the desiccant-bin, it messed up. Most probably because my settings. Out of my view, the leveling of my printer is good and it prints all test layers nice and smooth.
But my printer struggles whith the small long drop-form slots at the bottom.
Can you share the important slicer settigs here?
Does anyone else had such problems and solved it?
Or could it be that Cura is not able to slice such filigran slots?
I'm a bit helpless here.
New Status: Seems I found the problem. The wall thickness of 0.8 was too much. I set it to 0.4 and so far it is now printing in a much better quality. (I'm just at Layer 3! 🙂 )
Yeah, that part is designed to print with 0.2 layer height and 0.4 line width, using a 0.4mm nozzle. Larger nozzles might have an issue with the small openings. If you're still having trouble you could check out some of the remixes of my design that people have posted on Printables. I think a few of them included versions of the desiccant bin that are redesigned for easier printing.
@@gunplamark Hi, I use 0.2 Layer and the 0.4 Nozzle, but my Slicer settings were 0.8 Wall thickness. Setting it to 0.4 makes it.
I just finished my first box! And I like it. 🙂But I did some changes.
I will try to create a remix report in Printables.
I have been using them for about 5 months now my basement stay around 50 percenthumidity for a 70 year young guy
Nice work, But for me it's need a way more descent!
Hey Mark! Saw your video this morning and thought it was a great idea! I'll probably try and make it myself. Later in the day I came across another video that you might be interested in:
ruclips.net/user/shorts4r3wGYqxg-8?si=eS5jh2knk9ajg2-K
A modular heating/drybox system! Seems like a DIY version is needed ;)
I like this and appreciate the work you've put into it. I will be using most of your idea ;-) as I prefer not (at the moment, anyway) to print from the box as I have a AMS from my Bambu P1S, but I like the active heating you referred to towards the end.
I don't have the time, ingenuity or drive to do this myself, so looking forward to your suggestions, but I thought about using a small, external dehumidifier and trunking to form a closed circuit air system within the box - or several boxes - that would extract moisture from within the boxes without heating the air. Just a thought..!
Hi, so my concern is I am assembling these, the bearings you recomended are quite oily to the touch. One of the other sellers of identical looking bearings says this: “Note: Ball bearings are lubricated with imported grease in our factory, please wash thoroughly after contact” . My concerns are: 1) damage to the filiment from the oil 2) effect on the printing process 3) transfer of toxins to the resulting printed toy. I use steel nozzels so there is no brass for example, and I would hate to introduce something that is not healthy by accident. 😊
I clean all my bearings with a degreaser (Simple Green is the one I use) and then isopropyl alcohol before using them.
👍👍😎👍👍
1. Why do you need to label the filament ? It´s a transparent box you can read the label inside
2. Cheap heating solution would be the heated build plate of your printer. Simply print a plate with a fan and place it on the heated build plate
3. I wouldn´t use roller bearings, it adds parts and costs use some PTFE tube or do just without bearings you need a little bit of friction or the filament can become tangled
Otherwise it´s a great idea and well done sharing with the community.
1. When the containers are lined up on my shelf I can't see the labels inside, so having those tags on the front helps me to grab the one I'm looking for.
2. I've considered that as an option, in addition to a few other heating methods. I'll have to do some testing to see what works best.
3. In my experience the bearings are necessary for smooth movement. Without them, certain types of spools bind up, hit the back of the container, and stop turning completely.
1. I like this idea, I may redesign the holder / filament and add a label holder.
@@gunplamark 1. Fair eough.
2. Sound good, I am eager to see what you will come up with.
3. I have never had this experience, quiet the opposite, but if you say you need them, it´s up to you. I rather use PTFE tube, this way the spool does not turn too much and unspools.
4. The only thing i would like to add is a filament dry box which I can install on my printer. My printer is in an enclosure and the spool holder is on top to the side ( closer to center of garavity) so I would need a drybox mounted n the same position not somewhere to the side. Otherwise it increases the footprint of the machine.
if you dry it before it will save time and gel life
Now do a solution for 5kg spools. It's amazing to me that people still use 1kg spools.
These hygrometers are complete garbage and give random numbers. Waste of money.
I agree that they aren't super accurate, but all mine are good within 5 precent or so and that's close enough for me.
your printer is garbage. its 2024.
That's a Voron! I think this is still one of the best printers.
Wow.
@@raphaelb.4749 oh cool.... basically a cr10 with 100 mods. lipstick on a pig.
@@freelectron2029 Maybe don't be a dick?
nice but i like @marsgizmo better