I hoped for some clever feature that I could pull the filament from the storage box without opening the lid, thus keeping as much dry air in the container as possible. However, when I push in the rubber seal, it pushes back the filament so deep that I cannot reach it - I need to open the lid after all. IMHO that’s not a big deal, but I was wondering if I miss something?
So, when I dry filament, the logic to me is: Warm air is blown across the filament, picks up the moisture, and the moisture then is sucked up by the desiccant.
Now, when I dry the desiccant, no filament in the box, the hot air goes across the desiccant and extracts the moisture, which is then sucked up by… what?
My question is: Where does the moisture go? Any insights?
While I don’t have anything for the first one, the second one is you need a fresh air vent so the moisture can escape. I made one of my own during testing, but then I found these and they work fairly well.
When drying, it draws in fresh air and pushes the hot, moist air out so the moisture actually leaves the box. Just keep in mind when done drying, to seal the bottom of the box again to help keep new moisture from getting in.
#1 works great for me. when installing the filament, I push the filament end into the rubber seal and close the lid. When I need the filament, I just open the seal and the filament will be still in the rubber and I can pull it out. Did it 4 times and had no problems.
I’ve been very impressed by the SnapDryer. It’s much more convenient and does a better job than the Sunlu dryer it replaced. I only bought one complete kit and supplemented that with extra boxes. When I need to dry a particular filament, I just pop the seals off the bottom of the box and put it on the dryer unit without needing to unload the filament. I’ve been able to get the humidity levels down to 10-15%, sometimes requiring multiple drying cycles.
Looking closer, I realised that the dryer dock has on each side four small holes that allow a bit of air exchange. The CGI animations on the shop page even suggest exactly that. Seems they thought of that!
Ah, I get it! I was always trying to push on the rubber seal with the filament already in place and the lid closed, and doing so, I always push it back so deep I at best could grab it with tweezers. Hmm, but also your method requires to open the lid at some point… Well, as I said: Opening the lid shortly will not be a real issue IMHO - it is not that tons of moisture come in…
What exactly would set the Snapdryer apart from others in your opinion? I admit that I bought the Snapdryer mainly because I had a voucher to spend, and out of interest I looked a bit around and had difficulties to tell what exactly sets the different dryers of different brands apart. Happy to learn why I did the right thing
Got my Snapdryer setup today. Question: when using the filament tube, how are folks getting the filament back on the spool for storage? Seems like the only option is to open the box and manually draw it back in? Am I missing a hack somehow? Thanks
Valid point, did not think about that… I have not done a print since I own the dryer. But I guess it means opening the lid. I daresay that this is absolutely not a problem - it is not that even the most hygroscopic filaments start to drip with humidity as soon as they get in contact with open air. The most hygroscopic filament I own - PVA - I had hanging in the open while a three-hours print was running - several times even -, and it remained perfectly usable
I like this video which really puts the humidity “problem” into perspective.
Btw. in answering my own question of “what does set SnapDryer apart from other brands?” I came to realize that the Snapdryer seems to be the only solution where the drying-engine is separate from the storage solution - and thinking about that, this is really neat!
If you do many swaps, that wastes a lot of filament, especially if you have long runs between my SnapDryer boxes and the dual extruder like I do on my Artisan.
“a lot” is very relative. A 1kg role 1,75mm filament has ± 330m. I waste like 70cm each swap. I think it is no problem to push back 20cm. So 50cm waste possible. Thats 0,15% of a role. Like 3ct of a 20€ role. The energy and time of redrying is worse for me.
How often do you change your filament? I normally print one down. But I print functional parts in white/black/red.
The rubber plug is flexible enough that you can leave a few cm of filament outside the box and still seal the plug into the hole. That small bit of filament will just get consumed when purging so any moisture absorbed won’t be a problem.
For all my snapmakers, i have two PTFE tubes from outside to inside but most of prints use just one filament. So i have normally two loaded snapdryer boxes on my printers and just use one. Other is still loaded with filament and end hangs free in the enclosure. Moisture in the box keeps low. So i can change Change easily between Pla black and Abs white. Without doing anything then load / unload. The end of filament which get “wet” is also used while loading or on skirt. So no problem at all.
I am really happy with the boxes. Much much much better than my old sunlu dryer. I have two snapdryers with about 10 boxes.
I assume you have the original 2.0 single extruder. I keep my dual extruder module loaded and typically only use one or the other. I have two SnapDryer boxes holding those two filaments and, thus far, two more storing my TPU filaments.
Snapmakers product is faster drying and there is no moisture when sealed. My sunlu s1 Plus was able to dry a roll, but while printing and not drying in parallel the humidity again increases measurable. The whole case was absolutely untight. Unrolling was worse. And after printing I had to put rolls in Vacuum storage or sealed cases. Now it’s all in one. And it looks great on shelf
The only thing: the sunlu was quiter.
