Replacing desiccant in the material manager

[kayakbabe 10]

I'm thinking it's time to replace the desiccant in my material manager. It doesn't seem to be maintaining the 40% humidity level it is supposed to. 

I have a 5 lb jar of color changing desiccant beads that I could use. Are there any instructions for doing this? I seem to remember something not being shielded that I could zap myself on.  I think my warrantee was out around September so I won't be endangering anything regarding that.. 

 

[UlrichC-DE 106]

I have not disassembled the material station yet. But I almost suspect that there is no desiccant to be found there.

The humidity of the material station is in relation to the environment.

at 80% = 30%

at 70% = 20%

So you have a humidity of 90% (guessed) in the room.

I'm not worried about the MS.

[robinmdh 94]

AFAIK there is silica gel in a metal enclosure packed with a heater element to regenerate the desiccant, along with some sensors and valves and a fan this is packed into a separate enclosure within the Material Station.
it does not seem like it is easy to replace the silica gel inside, but the dehumidifier unit itself is separate unit and should be relatively easy to extract, once you open up the material station far enough which is a bit tricky.

Edited November 16, 2021 by robinmdh

[Dim3nsioneer 556]

it looked like molecular sieve not silica gel to me. Very delicate to replace since you have to open and properly reassemble that module @robinmdh mentioned. But the module itself is indeed easy to replace if you have a long or very short hex screwdriver.

[robinmdh 94]

@Dim3nsioneer all the documentation I can find mentions silica Gel. which does fit with the heating and valves/fan switching directions when regenerating we see in the code. Even though I worked on the Material Station from the proof of principle onwards (not from the prototype stage), the dehumidifier was mostly handled by a separate team, so I could certainly be wrong.

Edited November 18, 2021 by robinmdh

[toofy 0]

On 11/3/2021 at 7:11 PM, kayakbabe said:

I'm thinking it's time to replace the desiccant in my material manager. It doesn't seem to be maintaining the 40% humidity level it is supposed to. 

I have a 5 lb jar of color changing desiccant beads that I could use. Are there any instructions for doing this? I seem to remember something not being shielded that I could zap myself on.  I think my warrantee was out around September so I won't be endangering anything regarding that.. 

 

How do you know the humidity level?  Does the Material Station tell you this?

[UlrichC-DE 106]

I have installed an small air humidity meter. As a reference value is the NiceToHave

[robinmdh 94]

On 11/21/2021 at 6:56 PM, toofy said:

How do you know the humidity level?  Does the Material Station tell you this?

 

On 11/25/2021 at 2:32 AM, UlrichC-DE said:

I have installed an small air humidity meter. As a reference value is the NiceToHave

the API does show the humidity value:

http://<insert printer IP>/material-station-api/v1/material-station/ this returns a block of json data that includes the relative humidity as measured by the material station.

currently for me that is:

  "current_humidity": 24.823999,
the dehumidifier_status will also indicate if it is regenerating or drying

 

example output:

{
  "status": "operational",
  "current_humidity": 24.823999,
  "dehumidifier_status": "operational_drying",
  "door_opened": 0,
  "slots": [
    {
      "slot_index": 0,
      "material_guid": "44a029e6-e31b-4c9e-a12f-9282e29a92ff",
      "direction": 0,
      "material_selection_source": "RFID",
      "material_insertion_datetime": "2021-09-24T09:48:00",
      "status": "ready",
      "material_empty": 0,
      "material_remaining": 0.7471266666666666,
      "material_remaining_mm": 70836.0302122365
    },
    {
      "slot_index": 1,
      "material_guid": "40a273c6-0e15-4db5-a278-8eb0b4a9e293",
      "direction": 0,
      "material_selection_source": "RFID",
      "material_insertion_datetime": "2019-02-20T11:36:50",
      "status": "ready",
      "material_empty": 0,
      "material_remaining": 0.3941447384117807,
      "material_remaining_mm": 36486.623428299594
    },
    {
      "slot_index": 2,
      "material_guid": "c7005925-2a41-4280-8cdd-4029e3fe5253",
      "direction": 0,
      "material_selection_source": "RFID",
      "material_insertion_datetime": "2021-09-20T11:20:43",
      "status": "ready",
      "material_empty": 0,
      "material_remaining": 0,
      "material_remaining_mm": 0
    },
    {
      "slot_index": 3,
      "material_guid": "eff40bcf-588d-420d-a3bc-a5ffd8c7f4b3",
      "direction": 0,
      "material_selection_source": "RFID",
      "material_insertion_datetime": "2021-09-20T09:57:26",
      "status": "ready",
      "material_empty": 0,
      "material_remaining": 0.8312173333333334,
      "material_remaining_mm": 80100.72045390833
    },
    {
      "slot_index": 4,
      "material_guid": "2433b8fb-dcd6-4e36-9cd5-9f4ee551c04c",
      "direction": 1,
      "material_selection_source": "RFID",
      "material_insertion_datetime": "2021-10-20T11:11:13",
      "status": "ready",
      "material_empty": 0,
      "material_remaining": 0.006547999999999999,
      "material_remaining_mm": 620.8242143184884
    },
    {
      "slot_index": 5,
      "material_guid": "",
      "direction": 0,
      "material_selection_source": "",
      "material_insertion_datetime": "2019-02-16T11:28:58",
      "status": "new",
      "material_empty": 0,
      "material_remaining": -1,
      "material_remaining_mm": -1
    }
  ]
}

 

Edited November 29, 2021 by robinmdh

[Gero 39]

It would be great if there was a way to check the humidity value from the Printer screen.

This is something I just want to know from time to time.

Checking the humidity value in general, after I changed a bunch of spools, etc.

Doesn't feel very intuitive to manually check the API.

[kayakbabe 10]

Gero, has a great point, if the printer screen showed the humidity, it would help with troubleshooting esp when it is  intermittent or weird filament issues.

[UlrichC-DE 106]

I once had small dial gauges glued into the printer. The parts are quite cheap to buy in packs of five or ten.

 

 

 

Had also already put real measuring devices into the station.  I know from this that the measurement results also fit reasonably well with the small humidity gauges.

 

When the measured value in the station has risen to 40-50%, it takes hours until it drops to minimum again.

It is also interesting to observe how the humidity behaves to the outside temperature.

Many greetings