+1 respect for adding in a time to skip to the build

Thanks for the idea. I put ball bearings on each end of the spool rod to reduce friction as much as possible and just dumped a bunch of orange desiccant beads on the bottom of the case. That's another check on how your humidity is doing. When they turn green, it's time to replace/rejuvenate them. Humid air rises (counter intuitively) so the desiccant really should go at the top, but I couldn't think of a easy way to do it. Obviously a not-yet-existant 3D printed part is called for!

In the USA, there are bins of the brand Sterilite, available at Target and similar stores. One particular set of bins have soft seals around the lid and do a good job of closing the bin, sealing in the desired environment.

Fantastic news on manufacturers taking up your master spool idea. You never cease to amaze me Richard, great work and do keep us updated as to which companies have adopted the master spool. As for the heated box for temp sensitive filament again a great idea and extremely cost effective application of everyday products. Brilliant work just Brilliant.

Just a small warning these heating mats do not have any thermal safetys or sensors. If you do this i think it would be better to wire in a thermal fuse for safety sake just make sure you get a good value and place it in the box preferably on or near the heater so it cuts out if it does somehow heat too much.

Just fantastic Richard, great stuff. I’m off today and building my Anet A8 Plus. My first printer, so much to learn! However, years and years ago in a past life I was a tech supporting injection and blow molded polymers. I learned then as a lad (British words are better and yeah I’m an American, lol) that properly dried polymers produced the best results! I’m so stoked to be taking up this journey and this is just the kind of thing that will contribute to great success! Can’t thank you enough for sharing. GREAT STUFF!

Thank you so much about the update. You lucky one to receive a coil from "Das Filament". I've finished my Masterspool this morning. Now it's waiting to be fed with some filament. I will post a picture of the spool on Twitter. That DryBox system is a very interesting concept.

Great cheap idea that could easily be upsized for more spools, the only thing I would change is the hygrometer position. I used to make PID controlled egg incubators which need to be pretty precise in both temp and humidity control, those hygrometers basically use a one chip temp/humidity sensor to which air needs to have a bit of movement(notice the holes in the rear) by putting them in that closed tube filled with desiccant the hygrometer will basically give a false reading as its reading the humidity round the desiccant not what the inside the bag/box humidity is actually at. The silica also needs to have access to the air so that it can absorb moisture from it. I would maybe put the hygrometer in the same but open ended tube and put the silica in a different place, that way the hygrometer will give a better overall reading.

im actually more amazed by the humidity in a bag, great simple idea

great update and project - I've already priced out this method and it's great! Much better than using an old heatbed with temp control system like I had planned. I've emailed Push Plastic to encourage them into the master spool idea.

Congrats on the reactions by the filament manufacturers for the Master Spool concept. The heated dry box is a great idea as well. Keep the ideas coming....

this masterspool concept is so cool!! I can't believe I've never seen it before

Perfect!!! I was looking for a "food dehydrator" but didn't feel like spending $40+ for yet another bulky thing to have to store. This idea of yours uses a storage bin I already have and is considerably less. Purchasing parts now. Thank you! :)

I store my filament in an 80L storage box (Wham style) with door draft excluder around opening. It contains a "Caravan Dehumidifier", which is basically a silica gel box which has a built-in heater for drying back out when not in use. I have had values as low as 10%rH. It does feature a bowden connector for feeding filament to printers, but that one I don't use anymore (has a piece of tube blocked with hot glue). I now use a seperate box for each printer (currently 3 + a spare for visiting printers (ones I'm repairing for folks)), started out at a 7L ASDA food box (I designed feet, spool holder, sensor holder & etc). And those contain 1 spool and a 100g sachet of silica gel. The single boxes will generally get damper slowly, and when they get to 40%rH I'll dry the silica back out.

I really like the Master Spool concept :-) Due to your recommendations (and those from CNC Kirchen and Thomas Sanladerer), my filament now lives in a sealed box (generic DIY store brand) that I just dumped a kilogram of plain silica gel beads into. The hygrometer I put in there, constantly displays "Low Level" - I think the one that I had on hand only starts measuring at 10% humidity. My admittedly very crude test consisted of printing a couple of things from a roll of PLA I had just sitting on the shelf unprotected. Loads of issues from underextrusion due to "bubbles" forming in the filament and a few failed prints due to insufficient 1st layer adhesion. The finished prints really did not look very nice. I then tossed the spool into the drying box overnight and printed the same parts the next day. Same files, same temp settings, printer sat untouched for the entire time. The prints turned out a lot nicer with the dried filament. No stringing, layers were all consistent. Personally, I do not necessarily see myself building a heater in for my filament, but then I do not normally use any highly specialized materials.

A fantastic idea. Improvements: Gel silicate bags mounted so close to the humidity sensor alter the result. It is possible that the humidity in the bag or at the filament is different from what the sensor indicates because the air that reaches the sensor is air near the silicate.

LIked-Subscribed-Notified. Very nice project. I'm getting more serious about my 3D printing hobby-wanting better print quality, faster print times, more consistent results. I am upgrading/modding my printers. Thank You for answering many questions on your Blog page.

Now that is awesome. I especially like the use of the flexible heater. This is got to be one of the best DIY dry box designs I've seen yet.

Your idea of using a "master spool" is brilliant. Looking forward to it gaining traction.

I got this weather station in my living room with wireless sensors, shows 3 external sensor readings on screen. One was unused, so just stuffed that in my drybox which is in a storage room :) Reads temp and humidity.

This is one of the better designs I’ve seen. Good job and thank you for sharing 👍😎🇦🇺

Great Idea. I were looking for a dyi that is a clean look and do what it says. I even took a roll of PLA to the oven for remove the moisture until the filament be soft, like 5m. Note: the roll were on a Pyrex Glass. And work for a couple days it was great but the moisture get in again. I live near the sea and the weather moisture is 70% to 90%, not counting the days that rains. Good video do yourself and for 20$ is a good price and I was looking for bags for the filament thanks for the tip. Stay true to yourself.

This so handy. I ended up switch to PETG because I was tired of the filament breaking.

Brilliantly done, good sir. I think this will be a near-future project for me!!!

Richard, hi! Saw your canal on KZfaq and with pleasure subscribed. You are a good fellow, your videos are very useful to beginners as I. I from Russia, badly know English, however a lot of things are clear. I will be glad to see your next videos.

The problem I see right away is that this system just heats an enclosed box with supposedly wet filament. And heating something wet in an enclosed system does not rid the system of the moisture level. It just allows the air within the system to be able to carry more moisture per volume of air. You need to circulate fresh air into the box to then be heated to carry the moisture then be blow out of the box. However, you'd then want to seal the air inlet and outlet when you're not using the box to prevent moisture from building up inside again. This is inconvenient and would require more "engineering". That's why it's enough to just build a dry box. Where you pre-heat dry the filament before you put it in said dry box. You only do this once for every filament until that filament is all used up.

Really nice job. Thanks for sharing with the rest of us 3D printer folk.

For safety you could use a thermal fuse at what ever temp you not want it to go over for. It will blow if it gets too hot.

Very slick dry box. Nicely done.

Love that idea on the #MasterSpool! When i get my printer ill have to get some printed up!

I’m no drum banging environmentalist but I see the value of your idea. Print or buy a few master spools and filament manufacturers can sell their filament for less without a spool, plus it would save a lot of trash plastic.

This is great info. Thanks for sharing it. Just put a printer together and am interested in spending more time tuning that up and working out the kinks than putting the effort and time into designing a and thinking out a system to maintain filament. The links for those pieces still show up on EBay. Took a guess with the plastic box but I’s sure it will be close. Thanks also for sharing the files for the printed components. Very helpful! Cheers!

Richard that is Fantastic news! please link or make a video of the manufactures that will be processing un-spooled filaments, Hopefully the north American manufactures will fallow ! Bravo its a great step forward ! I see a you as father trying to leave his daughter a cleaner less polluted planet ! Which was the original idea of Adrian Bowyer, father of the reprap's, goal of less manufacturing waste by products.

Master spool is a fantastic idea. There is so much waste inherent in our hobby!

Great idea. What would be a good % of moisture to look for on the hygrometer?

Good update! Very happy for you! It would be great to implement some indicator of remaining length / weight on the master spool. Only very few manufacturers do, unfortunately.

Plastics absorb noticeable amounts of moisture in as little as 2 hours after being removed from a industrial dehumidifier dryer.

I was really enthusiastic about master spools when I heard about it but It works out more expensive than the filament I usually use

You're fantastic.. This was I'm looking for an Adjstable heater ... for Pets !! AWESOME Idea.

In USA we could get boxes very similar at WalMart. Sterlite is the manufacturer's name.

Master Spool, Great Idea!!! but here is a Couple thoughts ... Companies might have different center diameters of there coils, Maybe have interchangeable center circles or Have multiple arms that slide in and out in center to adjust to different Diameters. Also maybe a slot on side to hold Paper to show brand, ABS, temps or what ever info

Masterspool is great idea! But they are needed to made out of polycarbonate to withstand drying heat. Like abs or pc 60 to 70 C pla would deform on those temperatures

Great video. I was wondering if anyone has tried using those vacuum sealed storage bags together with desiccant. Pumping the air out might be helpful as well.

Excellent video Rich, awesome

Very Nice ! I have a system of dry boxes with dessicant but I am just getting into Nylon and love the heater and moisture meter ideas. Thanks

That is a very good idea and very well executed! Congratulations :)

I wonder if a fan inside the drybox might help with circulating the air. As long as you're sticking a 7w heater in there, you might as well pop in a 1w fan as well.

Great job Rich, thanks for sharing

Late to the party, but that’s a really cool dry box design 👍

I am building my own dry-box from two refrigerator vegtable draws , using oven lamps and a fan as heating and a digital temperature control as wel as serveral printed parts, total price will stay under 16 euro's. It wil hold 2 rolls of 1 kilo.

Would be cool to print a scale on the inside of the spool that gives an estimate of the amount of filament left on the spool.

A better name would be a RichRap Spool :) Very cool!

Hi, I was wondering if you could advise the minimum dimensions of the plastic container so I can get something similar. I tried at the local store but all the small 10-15l ones are very shallow. Thanks for your awesome idea.

Some large radius fillets should make the spool way stronger. Probably room to make it of less material too.

On the subject of RichRapSpool ( to be confirmed by Richard ) the most obvious concerns would be the possibility of deformation of the filament by the " holders " of all kinds during the mass production, packaging, shipping etc. IMHO, I highly recommend the use of wide, softer than filament strips of material to hold the filament in place.

I honestly wish more companies would offer filament without the spool, It feels so wasteful to throw away plastic spools. Some companies are using cardboard spools and I feel less bad about throwing those out.

I'm beginner in 3d printing and I thought the filament should be in a temperature about 70°c but in this box it's only about 10°c over the room temperature 🤔 now I'm really confused. 🤔

Congratulations on the success of #Masterspool. Now, I understand the reason for wanting a low humidity environment for your filament but what is the reason for it being heated? The concerns I have with the design of the box is that the heating element is only heating one side of the spool at any given time so wouldn't that create some warping as it expands and contracts possibly bring the filament out of tolerance? Then too the filament is feeding off the top so aren't you losing any advantage to preheating your spools as its cooling while moving away from heat source? And since it's feeding through those long tubes wouldn't the filament essentially be room temperature by the time it reaches the print head? If you wanted an all over ambient temperature I would think moving the heating element to a more open spot and using a small fan to distribute the air would be more effective like a convection oven. This would also help the silica do its job and you would avoid any humidity condensing on cooler surfaces like the lid. But if you just wanted warm filament to feed into your printer winding it from the bottom might be better as its at its warmest in that position.

Awesome work, Richard! Glad I found this video. My printers are all in the garage and we have considerable levels of humidity here. I'm going to try it out (as well as Masterspool project). Can you provide a link and measurements of that plastic box? I can't seem to find one in a square shape (all rectangular) Thanks!

Very nice, thank you friend . . .

You might need to be careful on the "environment-friendly" aspect. When you consider the energy & material used to print the master spool ! Esun have supplied spools that are bolted together for a good few years now and i wish they would supply filament "only" options. I guess their production is geared up to maintain "on-spool" supply and only a market shift will encourage them to change. The master spool is a good start

I don't understand, heat will warm the filament however you need to vent so that moisture will condensate in the cooler air. Otherwise the moisture stays in the 📦

Dang, the master spool, so this is where Bambulab got the idea for there spools. Kind of crazy, this is litterly an exact copy of what bambu made. Or rather, bambulab copyed this exactly. Hope they gave you some compensation for that.

Hello Richard, nice dry box but does the heating reduce the amount of water in the box or just the relative humidity? If you look at a point on a psychrometric chart, for example, 25C and 50% relative humidity. Heating this air to 45C will move the point to below 20% relative humidity but the amount of water does not change. When I build mine, I will do a test to see if the heat actually removes water. Best regards

Can i use clothe heat pad?

The metal lined bags work great, but I once tried pure plastic vacuum bags with dried pellets - I found the pellets were wet again when I came back to use them. Finally I realized, the bags were plastic, plastic absorbs moisture, so given time, why wouldn't the moisture migrate into the inside of the bag? The bags were still under vacuum - so moisture was finding it's way in, but air wasn't.

Hey, eSun has done it! I use their filament. It's great. So, what if the little tube the filament comes wrapped around had connectors so you could snap the outer plates on? That would still save packaging, plus the master spool would just be identical outer plates that clip onto the tube the filament is wrapped around. How about that being made an industry-wide standard?

engeneer at work.. everything is cool as usual..!

so this is where the master spool came from. this is what i buy from sunlu 2 pack comes with 2 refills an a master spool an its by far the cheapest way ive found to buy good consistent filament.

Way to go Frodo! I subbed THANKS

Can we get links to all the stuff u used like the heating pad and the thermostat/Hygrometer thing?

This is amazing stuf. I plan on putting it on top of my diy enclosure (from PRUSA) where the filaments go. I was thinking of adding another LACK table on top of it, enclose the sides with acrylic, then put 1 or 2 of these heating mats on the sides. Would 2 14w mats be too much? Currently there are 2 filaments on it but I want to put all my filaments there.

i know this is quite old, but im thinking of taking this a bit further, there are loads of old kitchen cabinets in my attic where i live and i might just convert 2 of them for filament hotboxes

I am building something similar with a heat and dessicant element, however I plan on getting the temperature a little closer (not much) to the glass transition level to dehydrate it better. The thing I'm worried about is it being too warm for the descicant to absorb anything or it releasing any moisture it has gained right back into the filament.

Nice build , but... once the filament is dry, the amount of moisture it can absorb is realtive to the volume of air around it. I take a smaller dollar store tupperware container and pass the filament through a PTFE tube and outlet. Use the filament holder flat, rotating on a printed holder. Dessicant is not necessary, because I have yet to see the dessicant turn color with small volume containers. The heater is not necesary either. Take a dry spool, in a small container, compare with and without dessicant, with and without heater. Neither desicant nor heater is necessary.

Thank you for sharing this Sir 🙇

Genius ideas!!

Putting the silica right next to the hygrometer will throw off your readings it should be ass far away from the hygrometer as possible. If its close your reading the "best case" humidity and not the worst case which should be what your looking for.

"The printed spool holder uses a section of M8 threaded rod and two M8 nuts." What is the length of the threaded rod used please?

Would you please post the inside dimensions of the storage box used for this project?

genius!

10w filament bulb should also work for heater right if you can still get those kind.

First, this is an awesome design. I got one setup and I'm designing some additional brackets for a tangle and/or runout sensor to interface with your dry box. Richard, What is your typical temp and humidity that you see you in your dry box? I'm getting about 29C and 37% humidity. My zip-loc bags are 21C and 62% humidity.

For nylons, silica gel isn't all that effective, especially when heated. Molecular sieves work wonders. In the US, I found that McMaster Carr carries them in packets.

Masterspool really is the way forward. All those wasted spools isn't exactly eco.

YOU CAN PRINT A MASTERSPOOL IN DIFFERENT COLOURS FOR EACH COLOUR YOU USE

How has no one made a 3d printable air-tight enclosure yet?

how hot does this thing get? I ordered from Aliepxress 2x 12v, 20W silicon heating mats for - 2.5$ each. 1x PSU 10A 12V - 11$ 1x1x Incubator relay with thermo sensor and control - 9$ Yeah, more expensive than the 6$ reptile warmer but I can expand it to several boxes by paralel connecting the pads to the psu. However its yet to be yester. but I have a feeling 40W might be too much for my PP container. I hope it doesnt melt or give in. Was hoping to set temp to 50°C for the nylon spool, so i dont have to bake it on the oven over night.

Hey Richard, how about including an auto rewind in the master spool ? Great idea to reduce waste btw :)

Hey Rich, have you found that you need to recharge the desiccant inside your dry boxes? Wondering how effective the heating element really is.

I wonder if you could use your heated build plate to make a filament dryer? A simple plastic box with a usb fan, et viola!

Awesome video thanks allot

Nice one 👍

Great video. Do you have a link to the round thermometer humidity measuring thing? And how accurate are they?

Instead of silicon packs, design with space for "Eva-Dry Wireless Mini Dehumidifier, White (E-333)" - re-usable forever. Maybe a bracket to suspend from lid, positioned towards back of box.

One question heater inside will dry but where will moisture or water vapour will go they will just stick to container ,so there should be intake exhaust fan with heater exhaust will push out moisture

Great idea

Great video! a question, if I may. I was thinking of adding small 12v fans to extract air - so it would warm and then the fan would extract the "humid" air from the box. Would you advise against that?

Seems a short term idea...save the makers supplying “free” spools...( part of production costs). Then, they sell you empty spools. I have a great idea....stay just as it is! Next somebody will come up with the idea that when shipped, just use plastic supermarket bags!

i was thinking of using a humitity and temp combo controller (27eur) and an old ender3 pro power supply and heated bed to heat up the dryer box tho im making my dryer box from aluminium i have laying around