My 3D printer will reside in my garage. Here in S. Texas my humidity runs in 50% and higher. I am considering building an enclosure for my printer. Adding a mini dehumidifier. (example Vavsea in amazon) Maybe in a chamber below the actual printer.
What problems may I be introducing?
Thanks
Perry
I just use a normal food dehydrator I can store away, when not needed. I am able to print directly from the dehydrator. Since it is not a dedicated 3d printer dehydrator it has a foot print and needs some space.
Another option is to keep the filament in a sealed container with as large a bag of silica gel as will fit and feed the filament through a Bowden tube to the extruder.
Thank you for your replies. The food hydrator is a neat idea. Too bad my wife gave ours away.
I have been watching a lot of YouTube to learn things.
My apologies in not being clear in my first question. I do understand the many ways to keep the filament dehydrated.
Let me first clarify how new I am. I have yet to print anything. I Just received my Kywoo Tycoon the other day. I will be putting it together today.(although not much to assemble.) I will need to load software on my PC (slicer etc.) I will be printing in my garage. Not Climate controlled. the cabinet I want to build will be an attempt to control the environment around the printer.
I live on the Gulf in South Texas, and humidity can get quite high and fluctuate. Maybe I am overthinking this. So let me ask the question another way.
Do I need to control the humidity around my print bed when printing?
Or, just the temperature?
Thank you again
Perry
You probably only need a enclosure if your planning on printing ABS unless your garage is drafty then I might consider an enclosure to keep the draft off the printer. I’d be more concerned about keeping the filament dry when it’s in storage. I keep my PLA in a sealed box (not air tight) with desiccant. I keep my [URL=“Amazon.com”]PETG & TPU in air tight cereal
containers with desiccant in them. They can also me modified and used to feed the filament for printing.
Thanks Gramps, That is good to know.
So I probably do not need to worry too much about humidity around the build plate, as much as keeping my filament in dry storage.
Yes my garage can get a breeze blowing through it. So Some sort of enclosure is in order for me. I will see what cost of DIY vs Purchase of tent style. I have a filament dryer. I am not worried about fumes being printing will happen in the garage. Between prints I will keep printer inside the house. One reason I liked the Kywoo. it has handles.
This mornings temp in the garage was 89 with 70% humidity.
Perry,
Like Gramps I have all my filaments - PLA, TPU, PETG - in air tight containers. I live in central Florida, but all printing and storage is in a room in my home so it has a year round controlled environment. When I built my containers I weighed each spool, stuck in a food dehydrator for 6 hours and reweighed. Amazingly all the spools were a couple grams lighter so I’m assuming there was moisture in them.
My main storage box is a 44qt (I think) bin with an air tight seal in the lid. Inside is an Eva-Dry dehumidifier. I found the temp/humidity indicators on Amazon. For me I recharged the Eva-Dry dehumidifier once after about 6 months of use.
Then I print from a smaller containers that have desiccant beads in the bottom and a reverse Bowden tube to the extruder. These containers have not needed a desiccant recharge yet after 7 months.
I’ve seen no significant jump in humidity when opening and reclosing the containers and if any after a few hours it was back to the typical humidity level - in my case 10% which seems to be what everything shows.
In doing this I figured I’d head off any potential problems before having one and save one step in troubleshooting filament/printer issues.
Larry
