This week’s selection is the Stackable Filament Dry Box by MakerWorld contributor Troepster.
Filament drying is rapidly becoming a requirement for FFF desktop 3D printer operators. Today’s highly engineered equipment is capable of printing with extreme precision and quality, and that leaves the weak link being the material.
If filament is not properly dried it will most definitely affect the quality of the resulting prints. Moisture absorbed by the material will boil during hot extrusion through the nozzle, creating bubbles that mess up surface quality and reduce part strength.
The wider range of materials available these days now includes more exotic materials that tend to absorb moisture more easily. All of this means that today’s 3D printer operators are drying a lot of filament.
That’s become easier because most of the major equipment providers now include dryers or drying functionality. Sometimes it’s built into the printer itself, and sometimes it’s an external accessory. But all of those are limited in capacity — only a few spools can be dried and stored at a time.
However, most 3D printer operators now typically have dozens of spools on hand to account for all these different materials and colors. How are they supposed keep them properly dried if they can’t all fit in the dryer?
Enter the 3D printable Stackable Filament Dry Box.
This model is able to hold a Bambu Lab spool perfectly and air tight. The procedure would be to dry the spool first in a dryer, and then store it in the dry box. The dry box includes desiccant packets to slurp up any humidity that leaks into the sealed dry box, keeping the spool as dry as possible.
The dry box is sealed through the use of a 3D printed TPU gasket, which prevents most airflow from the outside.
But is this just a box? Nope, there are some very interesting features designed to make it highly functional.
The Stackable Filament Dry Box is, well, stackable. This means it is possible to print dozens of them and stack up all those spools that otherwise would be (hopefully) in resealable bags. This could significantly tidy up many workspaces.
There’s also a spot to insert a standard circular hygrometer if you’re needing realtime data on the current state of the spool’s humidity.
Since it fits a standard Bambu Lab spool, the dry box will also fit countless other spools from different vendors. Because of Bambu Lab’s explosive popularity, many vendors are moving to that spool configuration.
Finally, the dry box also includes a spot to place a color swatch. This would allow the operator to instantly recognize what’s inside the opaque box.
3D printing can be a messy business, but this project should help clean up many workspaces.
Via MakerWorld
