filament drying and printing directly from the dryer

[Jeff Ratner]

I had been battling PETG stringing and blobbing issues (Elegoo PETG). I dried the filament but then removed it from the dryer, put it on the printer spool holder and started printing. The first print or two (about 6 hours of printing) came out good but then the strings and blobs would start appearing again. 

I then tried running the filament directly from the dryer to the printer. I now dry the filament at 65 deg C for 6 hours then turn the dryer to 45 deg C, start the print and leave the dryer running at 45 for the duration of the prints. I use a piece of teflon tubing to guide the filament out of the box to the extruder. 

Stopped my stringing and blobbing this way.

I was surprised that leaving the filament exposed to ambient for such a short time would cause issues until I saw it for myself.  I'm in a humid place (Florida) but its less humid here in the winter and the printer is in an air conditioned room. 

[Kurt]

Jeff - keep this in mind - as it's a Known issue!

When drying filament - and this has been discussed in Andy's podcast - you really are ONLY Properly drying the outer layers of a spool. So, once you print for a while, and it uses up enough of the filament - you will then end up printing with wet filament. And, yeah - using a dryer and feeding into your printer directly from the Dryer - will indeed resolve the problem. Similar to what we had been doing at Essentium as well. And, this was a known issue even with PCTG - which I used a lot at Essentium. 

-K