Been thinking of a way to quickly and safely remove the humidity from the filament I use to get better prints. I'm trying to print polycarbonate in particular and I need the inherent strength of this material to be at it's maximum potential to make a replacement part for a broken compound bow that I received as a gift. These particular parts will be responsible for holding the limbs of the bow in proper alignment when bolted in place. They cannot compress or bend very much before roughly 65 pounds of force are unleashed in a catastrophic failure. Anyone who fires this bow needs to be able to rely on these parts holding up. Making the parts out of a more substantial material is not much of an option at the moment.
From what I understand and can feel using my hand as a thermometer, the Oster is putting out about 140 F and the fan is blowing air around. Will that work well enough to remove enough humidity to get better and more solid prints out of my filaments? Would I need higher temps or is 140 F or so with a lot of airflow good enough?
The dehumidifier itself will not adequately hold a spool of filament, but if you cut a 48"x6" piece of sheet metal and screw the two ends together to give yourself a 13.7" radius hoop, you can use the bottom three trays to elevate the trays above the inner hump that contains the motor and then use the final tray on the top pf the hoop and viola you have an adapter to put the filament in a food dehydrator. I didn't have a 48" sheet, so I had to improvise and make a printed section to take it's place. I just zip screwed the metal to the adapter.
Thoughts/suggestions?
Oster Food Dehydrator
Re: Oster Food Dehydrator
I personally wouldn't trust a printed part in an application where failure would result in potentially serious injury. That's all I have to say.....http://www.youtube.com/user/aonemarine" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Lost pla castings? see me
Lost pla castings? see me
Re: Oster Food Dehydrator
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:270375
This is the part.
These parts were made out of plastic before and I believe they should hold up OK if they were printed using a modern quality plastic like Polycarbonate. The original parts cracked and eventually failed. If printed with low humidity, the parts it makes are pretty strong and would likely work for the purpose indicated. Polycarbonate is more stiff than most plastics and I suspect that inter-layer adhesion would be better with lower humidity. If I can get this printed Poly to behave like molded Poly, I would feel safe using this part.
This is the part.
These parts were made out of plastic before and I believe they should hold up OK if they were printed using a modern quality plastic like Polycarbonate. The original parts cracked and eventually failed. If printed with low humidity, the parts it makes are pretty strong and would likely work for the purpose indicated. Polycarbonate is more stiff than most plastics and I suspect that inter-layer adhesion would be better with lower humidity. If I can get this printed Poly to behave like molded Poly, I would feel safe using this part.