Thought3D has released an upgraded Drywise system.
The Malta-based company is well known for their Magigoo line of 3D print adhesive solutions, but they also produce hardware. In particular, they make the Drywise system.
What is it? It’s a filament drying system, but one unlike any others you will encounter. Instead of drying filament for hours in a heated chamber like almost every other system performs, the Drywise removes moisture from the filament instantly, as printing takes place. An undried spool feeds in one side of the Drywise, and dry filament comes out on the other side, right into the 3D printer.
I like to call it an “in-line” filament dryer, and we reviewed one unit a couple of years ago.
Now we learn that the company has upgraded the Drywise, announcing the Drywise 1.5.
The new version seems to address a few operational quirks that made the original Drywise tricky to operate. There are three enhancements.
The first is a more powerful motor to pull filament through the system. Thought3D found that some operators would use larger spools that are harder to rotate. The larger motor is able to handle them easily, and smoothly push the filament through the machine.
The second change has to do with that path through the Drywise. They’ve redesigned the path to have much less friction, making it far easier to load filament into the Drywise.
Finally, they’ve created a new UltiMaker Cura plugin that works with the Drywise. Normally when you use a Drywise there is a pause while the initial segment of the filament is dried, and then the lead end of the filament must be purged because it wasn’t dried — the drying takes place in the middle of the device.
This meant that operators would have to pause their jobs and do a bit of a material purge to get rid of the non-dry material before presenting the fully dried filament to the hot end.
The new plugin does all that automatically by inserting a pause and a purge into the GCODE. The result is that you should be able to simply push in a filament and start the job — all the previous manual interventions disappear and printing occurs automatically.
This looks like an excellent upgrade for Drywise users, especially those using them in large print farms where they can save significant amount of material waste by ensuring filament is properly dried.
Via Drywise
