Filament Moisture

Wet Filament

Plastics are hygroscopic and readily absorb moisture from the air. If spools of filament are left out they can gain upwards of 1% of their mass in water content. When wet filament is passed through a hotend, the water boils off as steam and exits the nozzle orifice, causing uncontrolled extrusion of material. If the filament is very wet, you can hear hissing, popping and crackling noises and even see steam or bubbles in the filament when extruding in the air.

This tends to show up in prints as excessive stringing and poor surface quality.

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Dry vs. Wet
Material is Carbon Fiber Nylon

Keeping Filament Dry

Our filament cartridges are air tight and feature a Hygrometer to help keep your filament moisture free when printing. It is important to maintain a humidity level of <10% and to recharge the desiccant inside the filament cartridge when necessary. One must minimize the amount of time the lid is open to keep the air inside dry. With an approximate volume of 1050 cubic inches, you will need 25grams of silica gel to protect the spool inside.

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Should the hygrometer display higher than 10% RH, replace the desiccant inside.

Desiccant Types

Additional desiccant can be purchased at this link on our webstore.

Alternatively, you can purchase large volumes of desiccant from Uline.

Drying Filament

Our filament is dried and vacuum sealed before shipment so that they are ready to print straight out of the package. In the case that you have to swap filaments or store material in the open, you will need to dry the material before printing. We recommend using a food dehydrator to raise the spool temperatures and remove moisture.