Same here! Had a lot of trouble with pva / nylon / and other exotics. Bought a food dryer, and cooked all of my filaments. Was able to save some of them.
Then i took some storage boxes, where i put the "open" reels in, with 500 grams silica gel, and was able to keep the humidity under 20%. So storage is secure.
Then, still the problem of taking the reels out and putting them on the printer. Holala, the Polybox came to rescue. Cheap and convenient, i will just make 1 modification, 2 exit holes for the filament in the base section for easy switching of materials.
I think many people don't realise the importance of keepingthe filamenst dry, and experience problems without knowing the real cause...
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kmanstudios 1,120
That is correct. But, since it does not make that sharp turn it does not require the filament guide in the first spool position. It also serves to help loosen or straighten the filament by not remaining so wound up at all points. If you look at the pics, you will find that it has plugable filament holes on top and bottom of the clear case, 3 positions of each.
If you are using Ultimaker spools, then there is a work around. Put an empty spool on the spool holder to tell Ultimaker what it is using.
However, since a lot of filaments are 3rd party (Colorfabb, Polymaker, etc) this can still be used as a work around. Especially if you print a lot of the same filament choices.
Or, in that case, you would be selecting the filament manually.
But, having the empty spool holders, you can hang empty filament spools anyway no matter what brand you are using.
When I was looking at the Polybox, I had to evaluate my own designs or mods to existing designs. For instance, I wanted to use a bowden tube to bridge from the dry box to the filament guide. Just purchasing the bowden tube alone is almost 30% the cost of the Polybox, and even more as you can load 2 standard size (around 0.75 kg) and they give you enough for feeding two spools, so that ups the amount saved to 60% of the basic cost of the product. Then I added on the time to print, the cost of the plastics, factored in a failure or two and even the thermo-hygrometer and battery and it came out a lot cheaper. For me at least. And, I can keep printing the things I want to focus on.
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