I say having spent the last weekish frustrated that my printer seemed to just be awful at making prints with even loose tolerances all the sudden.

I was using filament that had been left out a month or two, so not long at all, so I thought. Killed the rest of the spool trying to tune things, prints worked perfectly when I got a new spool out.

Goddamnit.

  • Cyv_OP
    5•11 months ago

    I think that depends on how it was stored and if you have a way to dry it. I know some people will heat filament or use dessicant packs in an airtight container to restore old filament, but I’m not sure how effective those are since I haven’t tried any of them before.

    Definitely would suggest getting new sealed filament for anything that requires tighter tolerances or parts that need to fit together though. The filament I had wasn’t breaking or making things look terrible, but it made the filament expand as the moisture boiled off in it, so the parts were all a tiny bit too big so no parts would fit together properly.

    • @scrionEnglish
      5•11 months ago

      Let me chime in. Like many, I started with cheap printers (< $200 range) like the Anet or Ender models. While they produced results, instead of 3d printing enabling whatever purpose or hobby they were bought for, figuring out the printer (and its issues) suddenly became a hobby of its own.

      That was fun for a while and I learned a great many things, but fixing bed leveling issues for the 47th time can get tiring when you just want to get that one print out that would fix the project you’re actually working on. So I caved and shelled out the money for a Prusa.

      In turn, 3d printing has become an enabler again. Don’t get me wrong, I do get failed prints every now and then (about 1.5 per year in fact, statistically speaking), but I can immediately trace the error down, and so far, the source of the error has always been the one typing this comment.

      Now, on to the filament. After a move I dug out some really old filament that had been sitting out in the open in my previous office for years. Mind you, that means approximately 58% relative humidity with an average temperature of 40F / 22C where I live, so overall the conditions were not horrible. Still, filament is hygroscopic and did apparently pick up all kinds of moisture - I was getting really bad prints, and on my holy Prusa of all things. I was shattered.

      Well, long story short, I bought a cheap, one-spool filament dryer on Amazon (Sunlu something something version 2) in a flash sale for like $40 and the issues disappeared.

      Moral of the story, no, not even a Prusa with all its reliability can protect you from moisture bubbling and explosively turning into steam in your extruder. Filament drying often does help though.