I’ve seen many debates about the need to dry PLA filaments. Looks like some people never need to do anything while others dry the hell out of them before printing.

I’ve been recommended once to print at 10% RH… After 48h of drying, I can barely get below 37%…

So: what’s the humidity level in the room your printer is?

  • Bluewing@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    6 days ago

    In northern Minnesota the humidity can vary greatly. Last weekend it was 90+% outside. While indoors the air conditioning had the house around 50%. And by winter time, the outdoor humidity can be as low 20% and indoors depending on heat source, around 30% to 40%.

    I finally broke down and bought a dedicated filament dryer, Sunlu S2, because my trusty old food dehydrator died the week before. I do dry PETG when it tells me to, and I always dry TPU. But never PLA.

    Just for fun, after I was done drying and printing some PETG, I dropped a mostly used spool of Sunlu white PLA into the dryer, (first time ever for PLA). That spool has been laying around in the open for at least 6 months now. The humidistat on the dryer showed 30%. I let it dry down to 20% and ran a test cube. No difference in print quality that I can see.