Spoilt Orion!

[JackFoz]

This is my printer! I've had It for around 4 months and have pretty much modelled the room around it! This is my first 3D printer so I didn't want to go down the kit route at the time but now I feel confident I could.

I have recently made an plexiglass box to go round the printer. I made this for a few reasons.

1. Fumes, I print ABS and Nylon 6 which both give off nasty fumes that I'd rather not be breathing in.
2. Noise, it's amazing how much noise insulation a 5mm thick piece of plastic gives.
3. Chamber heating, I've found I get better ABS and nylon prints because the air around the print is warm. On a decent day the chamber can reach around 37°Ish (100°F). The circuitry has cold air being pulled in from the bottom, chill out.

The box is held together with this stuff. It's unbelievably strong and only goes off once sprayed with activator. Not sure if you have an equivalent in the US.

The filament spools from a holder under the "finishing platform" as I like to call it. It then passes through the wood, then acrylic up into the EZStruder. Works really well. I have another spool down there because I can.. Maybe hopes for a dual extrudes mod!

The finishing bench itself is an absolute lifesaver. Having no garage makes finishing prints with a lot of support a messy job but now having a table with a vacuum built in is big plus (hole in the top left).

The printer is lit up with some LED strips at the top of the printer and the work bench is lit by one long LED strip. I need good lighting for any time-lapses I'm doing over night which I post to my YouTube channel http://youtu.be/BrpLPVtNaY4

Finally the only real modification to the printer it's self is that I upgraded the heating resistors (which both failed at around the 20 day mark) with one 40W heater cartridge. It works a treat.

Hope you like my setup and would be glad to hear your feedback!

[teoman]

That is cool. I will try to do something similar but space is close to nonexistent

[travelphotog]

Very nice setup for a small printer!

[Eaglezsoar]

I like the leds around the work area, a cool idea.
You whole printer area looks great. Excellent job!

[teoman]

You could als build an enclosure/ dehumidifying chamber for your filament.

[JackFoz]

You could als build an enclosure/ dehumidifying chamber for your filament.

Funny you should mention that!

I've just finished making a airtight box for some of my spools that also has airtight valves that let filament spool without it ever leaving the box.

Take a look:

The valves if you haven't already guessed are off bottles of condiments. They have a pretty neat pig valve that lets 1.7 filament through.

I've had trouble printing some nylon and that was partly due to the moisture in it. I was reading that curing it in the oven for 10 hours works but frankly I don't want to have an oven on for that long due to gas prices and fire hazard. So I went and got a fruit dehydrator (used to dry fruits) and from the feel of the filament it looks like it's worked quite well.

Link to the dryer:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Electric-Dehydr ... dehydrator

[barry99705]

Awesome idea with the bottle tops!

[geneb]

I'd like to know how that dehydrator works with trimmer line nylon....

g.

[JackFoz]

I'd like to know how that dehydrator works with trimmer line nylon....

g.

All it is blowing hot air it goes to 70°c but it made nylon softer than I liked it so I ended up drying at 50. So I wouldn't see a reason why it wouldn't work. It's all plastic.

[BONE]

Have you tried weighing your filament before and after drying? This would help let you roughly know when it is dry. Unless you have specs on the material for moisture content.

I started a thread here on the topic if you would like to chime in.
http://forum.seemecnc.com/viewtopic.php?f=80&t=6122

Great setup by the way!

[JackFoz]

Have you tried weighing your filament before and after drying? This would help let you roughly know when it is dry. Unless you have specs on the material for moisture content.

I started a thread here on the topic if you would like to chime in.
http://forum.seemecnc.com/viewtopic.php?f=80&t=6122

Great setup by the way!

Thanks!

Unfortunately I didn't weigh the spool of nylon before drying. But I did have a 10 meter sample of Taulman Bridge nylon so I thought I'd give that a try. Bridge nylon doesn't absorb anyway near as much moisture as nylon 6 which is what I normally use and it was brand new out of the bag. I dried it for around 5 hours at 65°c.

Before

After

So you can see even with Taulman Bridge nylon there's a fair bit of moisture lost and remember that's only 10 meters and it's brand new.

[BONE]

Thanks!

That's awesome! After you start collecting enough data points, you can start to see if material varies from a vendor. I have a roll of filament coming in today, and I'll post the results in the thread I mentioned above.

[RocketMagnet]

Looks like you have a small bag of desiccant in there but seems small for your container volume especially considering it's not 100% sealed.
I'd recommend filling the base with a few inches of no dust (low friability) indicating silica gel like this
http://www.amazon.com/Quart-Indicating- ... B00BXK8E7M

It's easy to regenerate in the oven, you can see when it's water saturated so when to regenerate and cheap to boot.

% Loss on drying is pretty simple and is done to constant weight. Never heard of LOD being performed at such low Deg C so presume it's over many many days
to attain constant weight.

Nor sure how effective drying on the reel will be as you've got lots of unexposed surface. Personally I'd just long term store the stuff somewhere warm in a desiccator.

Not got a printer yet (considering the Orion Delta) so have not experienced how moisture content affects the print.. can you compensate with temp or is it generating tiny bubbles in the plastic as it's extruded that's the problem?
At a guess variability of the plastic density & diameter will be key as I'd presume it's simply stable mass flow rate to a stable temp heated nozzle that's the main factors?

Personally I'm interested in practical applications so is ABS generally the stronger vs PLA?

[BONE]

Nylon sucks up a lot of moisture from the air and I think people have problems with bubbling or popping of material coming out of the hotend. I've read where people are dry their spools in an oven before printing, and it seems to eliminate the problem. Basically, I think people need a method of making sure that the material is dry before using it.

[JackFoz]

Nylon sucks

Yes currently I would say Nylon sucks. End of! I can't get it to work with warping ect and it's generally been a pain in the a*s.

Looks like you have a small bag of desiccant in there but seems small for your container volume especially considering it's not 100% sealed.

you can't really see from the photo but there's loads of Desiccant packets in the bottom (almost covering the bottom now) but I'll defiantly have a look for some of that blue stuff in the UK.

Is ABS generally the stronger vs PLA?

From what I've found PLA is more brittle but it's by no means weak. ABS seems to break at the layers more but that could be my settings? Is there anyone out there that could reccomended some better ABS settings.

Sorry I haven't been replying. I've been busy at school.

[RocketMagnet]

I'm UK also and got Indicating Silica Gel from Ebay this week. It's Orange (Dry) to - Green (wet) to - Blue (Totally saturated with water). Easy to regenerate in a low oven and it turns back orange.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/380404031306? ... EBIDX%3AIT

I got 5Kg and it came next day. It's also the "glass bead" type so no dust but I've still got a bit of card for the rolls to sit on.. will sort a mesh stand out sometime though. May even plagiarise your idea and make a septum with cling film / bottle top and a roller holder to feed direct from a tub... really cheap from Morrisons, think they were £2- £3 each.

IndSilica.png (104.72 KiB) Viewed 16540 times

Got enough to long term store a fair few rolls of filament, I'll even it out over about 5 containers so ~1kg per container. 1kg is a fair bit per container but I doubt i'll need to regen it very often then..

[geneb]

I'd be curious to see how well that would work (and how long it would take) to suck the water out of a roll of nylon trimmer line...

g.

[BONE]

I'd be curious to see how well that would work (and how long it would take) to suck the water out of a roll of nylon trimmer line...

g.

Probably still want to dry the spool in a oven on low heat. Use the silica to maintain the dryness.

[JackFoz]

I'm UK also and got Indicating Silica Gel from Ebay this week.

That's intresting. I'll defiantly have a look!

Probably still want to dry the spool in a oven on low heat. Use the silica to maintain the dryness.

That's the traditional idea but I don't and I can't imagine many other people don't want to leave an oven on for too long especially with something that could go up.

[emile1138]

I think everything needs more lights and clear plastic.

Then it will be finished. But only then

[RocketMagnet]

I agree heating up the spool will be better as it will definitely drive off the moisture a lot quicker.
Not sure how long it would take in an oven with the filament still on the spool but I would think at the low
temps were talking about even that way would be many days...?

So I decided that the easiest method for me personally is to build up a stock and "season" the plastic for several
months in a desiccated environment somewhere warm prior to use(near a radiator which will set up nice convection currents). In a sealed container at 20-30 DegC with essentially a Zero % water concentration in the airspace it will be enough over this time IMO as you have the energy to evaporate the water (20+ DegC) and the partial pressure of water vapour at this temp would result in a concentration in the range 1-2% in the air space there is only one place the water is going and that's into the atmosphere and then onto the silica gel. Yeah it will be slow & requires stock control which are it's major flaws but it's easy, cheap, low effort etc and your not in the bad books taking up the oven for long periods of time..

However if I was in a rush to try a new filament I'd certainly oven dry it but atm I'm not clear on what are safe temps that don't affect the various materials (the outer layers will see more heat than the inner layers etc so perhaps cause variable filament characteristics as you progress through the roll?)

If the material is strongly hydrophilic and the water molecules strongly associate with the surface then more heat will be required and you'll be forced down the oven route.... so it's material specific, I may do some basic testing at some point but as I'm new to this with no experience I think i'll have enough fundamental issues to deal with anyway.

[McSlappy]

That's a really nice looking setup!

[cope413]

Sorry to burst the bubble, but you simply cannot dry nylon, at 1atm, without heat.

All Nylon (and especially Nylon 6) bonds very strongly to water, and a low rh% is simply not enough to dry it.

All nylon processors dry nylon beads at 180-200F for up to 12 hours before use.

Once it's dried, you can keep it dry in a container with desiccant, but without heat, it's just not possible.


Also, for whoever said Nylon sucks... it only sucks if it's wet and/or your settings aren't correct. When printed properly, it's easily the most awesomely useful filament currently available. Flexible when thin, incredibly durable, insane interlayer adhesion, resistance to virtually all solvents, very high working temp, and it prints super smooth and with a glossy finish.

It's really fantastic.

I've printed well over 100 lbs of various nylons (over 60lbs of trimmer line), and would be more than happy to help get your settings and machine dialed in to use it.

[geneb]

I think a lot of it has to do with how uncomfortable people are going to be with stuffing a roll of nylon in their oven for 12 hours. If there was a way to "cook" the nylon in a manner that wouldn't engender nervousness about the process, I think the uptake of the material would be higher. I know it would be for me.

g.

[RocketMagnet]

Fair enough but I wasn't considering Nylon and as I'm new to it I'm avoiding Nylon until I get PLA/ABS printing as good as I can.
So for interest/future for Nylon what temps are people using during the drying phase? {edit ahh ok 180-200F}.. but heck 12 hours!

Not had any time to do any testing but it will be easy to determine if ABS and/or PLA dries sufficiently in a desiccator in a warm location
however it's certainly possible this wont be enough if the ABS is sufficiently hygroscopic.. guess i'll find out.
I've read ABS has a Glass point at~105 DegC and even though that's not a phase change does it affect the material? so are you restricted to <105
for drying?

My printer is apparently in the UK with Royal Mail now so i'll be able to mess around with ABS/PLA in the next week or two.
I've got some ABS and PLA already but I understand the Orion now ships with PLA... so will I need a fan and if so how big?
I've got a fair few in the range 50-100mm but nothing as small as 30mm. Considering it's now PLA in the box I'm wondering if there is a fan already.