Hi guys, it’s The Clog Guy, thought I’d try to share something other than problems…
Shortly before my printer went kaput again, I designed and printed a bracket to move my Bowden extruder to the hotend, making my printer a direct drive variant.
This posed an issue: I now needed to feed filament from the top of the printer rather than the side, where I previously mounted my filament holder.
I also have the issue many of you probably do where I am running out of room for my many filament spools.
Enter: The Rod. Two holes on either side of the enclosure, and I can hold probably 8 or so spools within the enclosure.
The Rod slides out on one end to allow for quick spool changes:
And I even had the foresight to put a clamp on one end to prevent it from getting yanked out all the way:
I canabalized the filament guide from the printer to the top of the enclosure with one screw so it would swivel, put those thumb tacks in to keep it from spinning all the way around, and the enclosure is ready to go!
Now if only my printer worked…
I’ve never really had issues with wet filament. I primarily print in PLA, and while it’s a pretty hot button debate, I lean towards the evidence of PLA not being effected by moisture. A user here ran an experiment and posted the results of leaving a spool of filament in a bucket of water for 24 hours and the running a print with it still in the bucket, I think they just put a sponge in front of the filament guide to get rid of the water droplets but it printed exactly the same before and after the soak. Ever since I saw that, I haven’t bothered with bagging or drying any of my PLA outside of printing with it inside the enclosure (where humidity drops to single digit percentages during prints).
Of course, mileage will vary from user to printer to filament. But in my experience, with filament from a handful of major suppliers ranging from a few weeks to around a year old, as long as it’s not snapping when I try to move it, it’ll print fine.
Wet pla also apparently gets brittle over long periods of time which can cause issues depending on your printer setup. This is only an issue if you are storing spools open for long periods of time.