So I’ve had my share of 3D printers in the past, and either the older ones (like the Prusa i3) were nightmares, or I just sucked at them.

Anyway with my very first printer I bought a 1KG roll of blue filament, more than a decade ago and over the years I’ve continued to use it, and it’s sort of worked, but often snapped off inside the tubes or at the base stopped the filament from being pushed in and ending the print.

This has made me very wary about 3D printing and opening rolls of filament, so I continued to use this one and at the same time later realised that half of my issues 3D printing on later printers I’ve owned were probably caused by this filament.

My latest printer, a Flashforge Adventurer 3 Pro, has been rock solid, but I did jam it a couple times after running out of the included filament and trying old trusty old blue, and that’s what taught me the difference between good and bad filament, but before throwing it out someone mentioned a dryer can stop filament from going bad by forcing the moisture back out of it.

Well, if it can force moisture out, can it fix ancient filament that’s never been kept airtight? Lets find out.

Filament

The filament in question is a blue roll that was the first ever roll I purchased…and the only roll I had purchased until a few weeks ago and I was just using it through the ages, including on my latest printer (which caused me lots of headaches and taught me it was the filament that was the problem), as you can see I transferred some to a smaller roll (to fit my new printer) and it has all internally cracked and snapped in several locations, and is brittle enough for me to snap it with one hand as you can see in the images:

The Dryer

This is my first dryer, and I bought the relative cheapest on AliExpress, there were some cheaper options for single roll dryers, but this didn’t cost much more, for two rolls, and the goal of this exercise is to allow me to have more than one roll open so I can do prints of different colours.

So I’m not advertising this dryer as such, just dryers in general, but you can see the branding in the images if you want the same one:

To the credit of this particular one, though, it had very easy to understand and well written instructions in English. I did have to replace the power adapter (12V 4A 5.5×2.5), though, because it was an international plug and not one that could take a jug cord.

Instructions indicated to run it at 40-50’C for 12 or more hours, with the lid propped open to release moisture. I did so starting at ~6:30pm for 12 hours. So by the time I woke up, it had been sitting in the air a bit so I did another 3 hours when I woke up.

So set temp, set time and wait until it’s done. Easy.

The Printer

The printer is a Flashforge Adventurer 3 Pro, which I bought used for $150 on TradeMe. Has been awesome, great adhesion, very easy to print, almost no work (until I used this blue filament on it a few weeks ago and it all broke up inside the tube).

Initially I routed the filament up and through the front hole on the dryer, which warped at a weird angle, so I settled on opening the lid and running it that way. Will have a play another time.

I fed the filament and it quickly pushed through without breaking.

Printing

I chose a random figure that was preloaded on the printer (a Buddha) and hit print. So far so good. It went through the process of printing the raft, and you can see one of the lines didn’t turn out well, but it quickly recovered and didn’t seem to mind that. Being a raft it didn’t matter much and it will be tossed afterwards.

Things are looking good, happily printing away, no issues.

Complete! No stringing, no issues, raft pulled off nicely exposing a clean floor.

I have since followed up with a few more prints, like this Rhyhorn, supports still need removing, but the print itself is excellent.

Conclusion

Filament degrades with moisture, so air exposure and time will render a roll of filament unusable. It will still melt and print, but if it breaks inside the machine it can stop the filament moving in and effectively halt the print.

However it looks like a dryer provides two major benefits, it can recover even ancient, poorly treated filament, as well as other minor benefits such as less stringing and higher quality prints. Making it a good tool for the cheapest of 3D printers, like me.

But also it can allow you to open, use and maintain more than one colour at a time, since you can assume you will be able to force the moisture out of the filament as required.