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Canadian startup PrintDry offers a device that any printer will love - a convenient and stylish filament dryer. The 3D printing process is full of pitfalls. From starting a print to finishing a cycle, anything can happen: crashes due to improperly prepared files, power outages, clogging of the hot end, vermicelli, curious cat. Even if all the nuances seem to have been taken into account, a banal climate or bad weather can throw a stick into the stretching mechanism.
The fact is that most plastics are hygroscopic to one degree or another, and moisture accumulating in plastic can not only cause interesting special effects in the form of steam emanating from the nozzle, but also serious defects in the product itself. This problem is well known to all experienced printers, and the solutions usually have the character inherent in inventive people, which makers are: cook filament in the oven, put a bar in a vegetable dryer, stand for a few minutes in front of the stern look of the mother-in-law, dissatisfied with the singing of the 3D printer at three o'clock in the morning and a slight taste of nylon in patties, etc. Isn't it time for a more advanced solution?
The device, offered by the PrintDry team, uses a heating element to dry the filament in a closed chamber equipped with an extractor hood to remove water vapor. There are no restrictions on the diameter of the bar, because the whole coil or skein is dried at once. Of course, miracles should not be expected, because the inflection with the temperature regime will harm the plastic itself, but the temperature can be adjusted from 35 ° C to 70 ° C. Drying itself can take several hours, depending on the initial state of the filament.
Interestingly, the 3D printer can be fed directly from the dryer while the dryer is doing its job. There is some logic here, since the outer filaments will dry first. So why wait? The dryer is equipped with a turntable so that the coil will rotate to feed the dry filament directly into the extruder. And if desired, you can even dry the absorbent granules normally added to sealed filament packs and reuse them.
The PrintDry dryer is suitable for continuous operation for 40 hours and has already been tested for compliance with European and American safety standards for household electrical appliances. Pre-orders are currently accepted at a cost of $ 79 apiece.
