Interest on filament dryers?  

Interest on filament dryers?

Hi there,

Although new in Prusa forums, I am not a stranger on 3D printing.

Normally my background is Motion Graphics, 3D Modeling, VFX and such and I don't consider myself that I am a expert or engineer of some sorts but I love tinkering and being a maker.

I have a MK3S since 2018 and very happy about it. Its and absolute beast of 3D printers.

But when it comes to 3D printing there might be problems as usual, and some problem is not even related with the machine itself or the settings you are printing with but the filament. So I decided needed a filament dryer and started looking into the solutions available out there.

The problem is, the solutions out there either is too simple, cheaply designed, not user friendly or too expensive for home use. There are some machines that is made from food dehydrator which is neither so precise or professional and some super expensive ones from Mass Portal which is overkill for home or small commercial usage.

So I decided to build one and possible not only for myself. But before todo that I want to explain what it is going to be like and want to know your suggestions.

What I am aiming todo is build a filament dryer that is not using any aluminum extrusions or large machined parts or expensive injection molded stuff as a frame but made with fully 3d printed enclosure possibly made out of nylon to keep the price lower, lighter, simpler and cool looking build without too many parts (As a side note: I am going to need a large format 3D printer with 1.0mm nozzle to print those 800mm huge nylon frames within a decent amount of time and quality btw), uses available 3d printer parts as a heater, have a screen that user can customize it however she/he likes and able to print while drying easily and compatible with multi material setups with at least a space for 5 filaments. I am also thinking to add a single motor to turn the filaments slowly during the drying sequence so the heat will radiate equally all over the spool.

I am also planning to implement, what I am calling "zoned drying" for different type of filaments with different heating settings simultaneously inside the same machine with compartmentalized spaces but for now its not into my main plans for the sake of cost effectiveness.

I will try to keep the price range as much low as possible but that is all about the components and build quality that I am going to use. It can either be a super cheap machine with some hiccups around a price range of 199 but it can also be a very robust solution for 399.

There might be also a smaller versions of it, like just small enough to hold 1 or 2 filaments to keep the prices even lower. Since the design is going to be a super modular I just need to adjust the size of the frame components.

And it needs to look like a simple yet super cool, like a Prusa Printers itself 🙂

I just wanted to know if there are any people might be interested in such machine and if what will be their expectations out of it like specs, price range, size etc.

And of course its going to be a open-source 🙂 You can modify it however you like.

Thank you.