I had a quick look at BigRep’s DryCon system.
At first glance, this would appear to be a typical drying system for 3D printer filament. Drying is essential to achieve the best quality because any absorbed moisture will boil out during extrusion. This creates bubbles that will both weaken the part’s strength and mess with the surface quality.
While the DryCon doesn’t take up much floor space, as you can see in the top image, it does have quite a bit of capacity:
- 24 x 750g spools or
- 16 x 4500g spools or
- 8 x 8000g spools
The DryCon consists of two enclosed chambers that have independent thermal controls. These can be set to different temperatures, meaning you can properly process more than one type of material at a time.
The maximum temperature for the chambers is a whopping 180°C, which is much higher than most dry boxes. This high temperature enables the DryCon to handle several high-temperature engineering filaments that would otherwise be challenging to dry in cooler systems.
An intriguing feature of the DryCon is that it doubles as an annealing station. Annealing is a post-processing step where printed parts are exposed for a time to higher temperatures. This helps reorganize the molecules into a stronger state, making the parts far more robust.
The independent nature of the two chambers means you can do both of these at the same time: you could dry some spools in the lower chamber while annealing some parts in the top section.
Also, unlike many drying systems, the DryCon actually removes moisture. Typical dry boxes simply heat up the material, releasing water vapour. That vapour remains in the chamber and then is re-absorbed by the filament once the heat is removed.
Here, the DryCon takes a different approach and performs air changes periodically. This removes the moisture from the heated chamber, properly drying the filaments.
Finally, the DryCon has several ports through which material can be fed directly to a nearby 3D printer. This means the material can remain in a dried state for as long as possible, increasing print quality. This is particularly important on longer jobs, which often happen on BigRep’s massive 3D printers. A common issue is that the prints can take so long that a spool might re-absorb moisture during the lengthy job. With DryCon, that doesn’t happen.
The DryCon looks like quite an effective materials management system, and would be suitable not only for BigRep equipment, but almost any 3D printer configuration.
Via BigRep
