SoliForum - 3D Printing Community — Looking for Pellet Dryer design

Re: Looking for Pellet Dryer design

2016-01-14T12:17:21Z

I just use a dehumidifier. My printing room is currently 86F (iut is in the 40s outside) with 21% ambient humidity. I wonder if this is sufficient?

Re: Looking for Pellet Dryer design

2016-01-14T02:05:42Z

elmoret wrote:

Lyman made something like that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4F3e6K5Hxk
but a food dehydrator works as well:
ggalisky wrote:
Many different types of plastics need to be pre-dried in order to get good quality filament and prints. The plastics that encounter frequently that need pre-drying are PLA, Nylon, TPU, and PC (polycarbonate). There are several more plastics that need to be pre-dried, but for simplicity I only listed a few. I used a food dehydrator I bought off of Amazon to dry all of my pellets. http://www.amazon.com/Presto-06300-Dehy … dehydrator . The dehydrator comes with mesh plates, so you need to find a way to stop the pellets from falling through. I use this: http://www.amazon.com/National-Presto-D … ZNA913RBA. I usually let the pellets dry for about 10-17 hours. After drying I seal the pellets in a zip lock bag with a silica gel packet inside, and add a label so I know what plastic it is.

Oooh - I hadn't seen Lyman's one. Is that just a fan heater that he's aiming at the gismo? I like the agitation of the pellets as that vastly decreases the drying time.

Re: Looking for Pellet Dryer design

2016-01-14T02:04:00Z

CFTechno wrote:

this one? https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:912624

That's the one I was thinking of! Thanks for finding that.

Re: Looking for Pellet Dryer design

2016-01-13T14:20:48Z

this one? https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:912624

Re: Looking for Pellet Dryer design

2016-01-13T12:15:17Z

I have the parts gathered for a design I have in mind. It's basically a rotisserie toaster oven with the elements controlled by a PID. All of the parts other than the drum came from a toaster oven that the timer burned out on. The rotisserie would have a drum basket to tumble the material and a fan to move air. But you know the story, busy at work and no time for pet projects.

Re: Looking for Pellet Dryer design

2016-01-13T09:15:50Z

Lyman made something like that:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4F3e6K5Hxk

but a food dehydrator works as well:

ggalisky wrote:

Many different types of plastics need to be pre-dried in order to get good quality filament and prints. The plastics that encounter frequently that need pre-drying are PLA, Nylon, TPU, and PC (polycarbonate). There are several more plastics that need to be pre-dried, but for simplicity I only listed a few. I used a food dehydrator I bought off of Amazon to dry all of my pellets. http://www.amazon.com/Presto-06300-Dehy … dehydrator . The dehydrator comes with mesh plates, so you need to find a way to stop the pellets from falling through. I use this: http://www.amazon.com/National-Presto-D … ZNA913RBA. I usually let the pellets dry for about 10-17 hours. After drying I seal the pellets in a zip lock bag with a silica gel packet inside, and add a label so I know what plastic it is.

Looking for Pellet Dryer design

2016-01-13T08:05:33Z

I have found that drying pellets/masterbatch before extruding has a tremendous effect on the resultant filament quality. At the moment I just spread out the pellets on a few oven trays and put in the oven for >4hrs at 50°C-75°C. The wide temp range is due to the low temp setting of my oven - it cycles quite wide at low temps as it's not really designed for that - it's designed for cooking!

I saw a post somewhere where someone had designed and built a pellet dryer. They had a step-by-step and some pics and a video. I just don't remember where I saw it. I'm not sure if it was here or Instructables or Youmagine or somewhere else. I recall in the post that the author mentioned it dried the pellets really quickly and effectively (thoroughly). It was kinda like a mini washingmachine with some holes in the sides and spinning with a motor, blew (hot?) air through it etc. Does anyone remember seeing such a thing? Please can you point me to it?