Storing PLA
I read today that PLA is hygroscopic and it is damaged by humidity. So far I haven't worried about that -- I have one roll on my printer and I just used it until it ran out. BUT.. I don't print very often {I spend most of my time designing and futzing]} and I'm wondering if it makes sense to unload the filament and store it away {how?} when I'm not going to print "for a while" {how long?} Thanks!!
Re: Storing PLA
It will vary by your local conditions and filament. I've had some PLA sitting in the open for months (New England area) and it prints fine. Had another spool start to get brittle after 4 months. I put most spools in a 2 gallon ziploc bag with a packet of fresh desiccant and don't have many issues. I do have a dryer that I've needed to use twice. I use it to dry out the desiccant packets more often.
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He is intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates two dimensional thinking. -- Spock in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan
RE: Storing PLA
I just recently got into the FDM Printer thing after owning an SLA for a while now and I was wondering about things like temperature.
At the moment I've located my i3 MK3S besides my Form² in a closet which also houses my Dataserver which is ideal for my Form² as it just about produces enough heat for the Resin to be immediately ready to print if the need arises. How is it with PLA? Is there a threshold I should be worried about? Currently, with the heatwave kicking in another time this year, I'm sitting at 32°C ( according to the i3 MK3S' Sensor Readout )
RE: Storing PLA
Just to chime in, on my other printer (Maker Select from Monoprice), I couldn't leave a spool of PLA on that machine for more than a couple of weeks, or I would find that it had broken under the stress of it being unspooled. (Since the filament is straightened out from its curled state after being wound onto the spool). I have attributed this to the fact that it has been absorbing moisture from the air.
I always store filament that isn't mounted on a printer in a storage container with a bunch of silica gel desiccant.
I switched to PETG about 3 months ago and have not seen the filament break from sitting in the open during that period of time.
On my new i3 MK3S, I built a dry-box from a Sterilite container, some printed parts, fittings, and PTFE tube that run partway into the Ikea Lack enclosure I built around it, but I haven't confirmed that this makes a difference in my environment because I have been printing almost exclusively with PETG (just one PLA part in the week I have had it running). It also doesn't sit idle very often, since the "new toy" factor hasn't worn off yet. 🙂