XL: Filament Dryboxes  

RE: XL: Filament Dryboxes

Not sure I understand the point, what's keeping you from doing that? I have dry boxes on a shelf above the XL and feed filament from there. I just run a PTFE tube from the dry box to the filament sensor. (or for TPU directly to the extruder).

RE: XL: Filament Dryboxes

RE: XL: Filament Dryboxes

I designed dry boxes that mount on the XL with desiccant drawers: 

https://www.printables.com/model/1219198-xl-mounted-dry-box

RE: XL: Filament Dryboxes

Wow, those look fantastic! Super clean design and really smart integration with the XL.

RE: XL: Filament Dryboxes

There's also this thing called the Sicco Box. I was looking into getting one if I get an XL:

https://www.printables.com/model/939432-prusa-xl-series-sicco-box-the-prusa-xl-drybox

RE: XL: Filament Dryboxes

This was my solution:

Dry Box Bench

https://forum.prusa3d.com/forum/postid/714906/

RE:

I've been working on a solution using Repkord's RepBox TT, adding a heat source and vent.

RE: XL: Filament Dryboxes

Would like to see your RepBox re-fit when complete!

RE:

Hello George,

I have been thinking about adding a heater and circulation to my dry box design too. I don't think I would need all 5 dry boxes equipped with heated dryers. Would you think that just hanging one dryer box on the XL would be sufficient? Some people may decide to make 5 dryer boxes for the machine, but I think that is way overkill. Any thoughts?

RE: XL: Filament Dryboxes

I posted this one elsewhere in the forums, goal was to have 5 separate heated enclosures, each individually controllable and automated such that the correct dryers will turn on with the correct filament type at the start of each job on a 5XL.

The end result now is exactly what I had envisioned - I just start a job and the dryers take care of themselves, even for multi-tool and mult-material prints.  They turn a light on inside the unit so you can see which spools are in use and track how much is left etc, each material is handled according to the material temp and time needs, and the spools not in use stay dark and won't be heated up.  

Posted by: @luma

Finally got a working solution!  As noted above, I've been trying to figure out which tool heads and materials are in use for a print as it starts, so I can set my the correct filament dryers to the appropriate setting.  For example, if I start a job with PLA on head 2 and PETG on head 5, turn on dryers 2 and 5 with the correct temperature for each (and then hey let's turn the lights on in those two so I can see how much filament is left, what color is loaded, etc).

Here's what eventually worked:

1. Home Assistant PrusaLink integration maintains a connection to the local REST interface on the XL
2. Tuya-Local custom component connected to 5 GratKit Firefly filament dryers, devices named as filament01 through filament05
3. Create a command_line sensor to pull current job details and have it update when the printer goes to state "Printing"
4. Create an automation to read that sensor, turn on the correct filament dryers, and set the appropriate material (which will set the temp etc on the dryer)
5. Optionally, create a simple automation that'll turn all the dryers off when the job goes to state "Finished"

The end result is fully automatic - I shoot a file over from PrusaSlicer, printer gets started warming up, few seconds later the correct filament dryers turn themselves on with the correct settings.

I should note that this might only work with PrusaSlicer.  I couldn't find a REST command that'll tell me what tools and materials are in use, so instead this will download the currently-printing GCODE to pry some metadata out of the job which PS will put there by default, and is plaintext for both GCODE and BGCODE jobs.

What I'm finding is that this also lets me run experiments.  I created a desiccant-loaded spool bearing mount for these dryers with hopes of juicing performance a little bit.  Because the Gratkit dryers integrate with Home Assistant I can create charts like this to see how well it works, here we see filament03 with the desiccant and filament04 without.  Note how the desiccant makes things worse 😐