you should look into Renewable Mini Dehumidifiers, they are pretty cheap, in the $10 to $15 range for a small one that would be plenty for your box, they last about 20-30 days depending on the humidity, before you have to renew them, and can last up to 10 years before you have to replace the unit, they work without power, and when you renew it, you just remove it from the box in this case, and plug it into a outlet for about 12 hours, basically its just a reusable desiccant box that self drys it, and shows you when it needs to be dried, it wont dry the filament, but it will keep the box from gaining moisture for a number of days, without knowing measurements, it looks at least like it would fit in the space between the front of the filament spool and the front of the box, or at least the one i have would, think its a eva-dry e333 but it has been a while since i got it. Could also cut the divider between the current desiccant box you use and its space for one of these units, and i bet that would also work just fine, maybe toss in a velcro strap to hold it in place when transporting the box, and just say to customers, you can supply your own unit, or we can include one for X price.
Just one point in fact don't tell people it'll dry it out if it's already wet the only way to dry up come at once it's wet it's the bake it desicant will not do it
Once the filament absorbs the water from the air (hydrolysis) the desicant isnt strong enough to pull it back out, while it will keep filament dry in a closed space it wont "dry out" filament that has already absorbed water. Nylon is even worse. I actually put this to the test as i live in florida and do a lot of printing this was a concern so I left out some PLA for 2 weeks then put it in a air tight box with desicant beads (11 gallon container with 1/8 the way filled with desicant) and the desicant did not pull out the water i still had sputtering from the nozzle when i printed. So i baked it and it worked. In closing you dont actually need an oven to bake it if your willing to be patient. A food dehydrator is enough to try it back out after a few hours. Hope this helps.. BTW i dont want/mean to rain on your product, there is definitely a need for dry boxes to store filament, i use 2 :)
Hi Mike, thanks for the good feedback. No raining on our product taken. We've tested a few filament roles that have been left out and they worked well, but perhaps the humidity was not high enough. I definitely don't want to claim a feature if it's not true. We'll look into this into this for sure.
you should look into Renewable Mini Dehumidifiers, they are pretty cheap, in the $10 to $15 range for a small one that would be plenty for your box, they last about 20-30 days depending on the humidity, before you have to renew them, and can last up to 10 years before you have to replace the unit, they work without power, and when you renew it, you just remove it from the box in this case, and plug it into a outlet for about 12 hours, basically its just a reusable desiccant box that self drys it, and shows you when it needs to be dried, it wont dry the filament, but it will keep the box from gaining moisture for a number of days, without knowing measurements, it looks at least like it would fit in the space between the front of the filament spool and the front of the box, or at least the one i have would, think its a eva-dry e333 but it has been a while since i got it.
Could also cut the divider between the current desiccant box you use and its space for one of these units, and i bet that would also work just fine, maybe toss in a velcro strap to hold it in place when transporting the box, and just say to customers, you can supply your own unit, or we can include one for X price.
Link to but this box?
Just one point in fact don't tell people it'll dry it out if it's already wet the only way to dry up come at once it's wet it's the bake it desicant will not do it
Why won't descant dry it out?
Once the filament absorbs the water from the air (hydrolysis) the desicant isnt strong enough to pull it back out, while it will keep filament dry in a closed space it wont "dry out" filament that has already absorbed water. Nylon is even worse. I actually put this to the test as i live in florida and do a lot of printing this was a concern so I left out some PLA for 2 weeks then put it in a air tight box with desicant beads (11 gallon container with 1/8 the way filled with desicant) and the desicant did not pull out the water i still had sputtering from the nozzle when i printed. So i baked it and it worked. In closing you dont actually need an oven to bake it if your willing to be patient. A food dehydrator is enough to try it back out after a few hours. Hope this helps.. BTW i dont want/mean to rain on your product, there is definitely a need for dry boxes to store filament, i use 2 :)
Isn't that just a capacity problem? (saturated desiccant) Or are you saying that heat is *required* for the plastics to give up the moisture?
Hi Mike, thanks for the good feedback. No raining on our product taken. We've tested a few filament roles that have been left out and they worked well, but perhaps the humidity was not high enough. I definitely don't want to claim a feature if it's not true. We'll look into this into this for sure.
I was actually hoping this was a miniaturized dehydrator. My $30 Walmart food dehydrator is pretty ugly and takes up a lot of space.