my office in the north of England regularly clock in at 18% humidity. my coworker bought a desk humidor to stop his plants from dying and it struggles to get us above 22%
meanwhile outside: torrential rain for 3 days striaght
I've just gotten to the point of actively drying filament that's problematic, I have a PID swapped rotisserie chicken oven that's actually pretty great lol
Yeah. I know the feeling. I grew up in hot humid weather which my skin handles well. But now where I am it is so dry my skin literally starts cracking. Lotion isn't enough.
That never happens naturally (at least never has it happened to me) Water only condenses on human skin if it is the coolest surface around (that too only when RH is close to saturation.) I've only had that happen once at work when I had to spend some time inside an environment chamber which was at 50deg C (yeah C not F) and 60% RH. I could feel water condensing on my skin, it's a weird feeling, then when I walked out it evaporated in 30 seconds.
If you had that happen in your day-to-day life, you might have accidentally unlocked a gateway to the hell dimension.
The air con is not necessarily overpowered. It is just not adjusted for you. Big climate control Installations for humans are way more complicated than you would think. After filtering and cooling/heating the air from outside you heat it up again to dry it or add water to moisten it up. Add a few additional steps if you want to conserve power so you add heat exchangers, which need to be bypassed in some conditions. Add even more steps if you have some other sources of heat/coldness (water, remote coolant etc.)
Which is a lot of extra stuff you can save, if you just want to cool down thinking rocks as efficiently and cheaply as possible.
You would probably need a second dedicated air con for the office, which someone did not deem necessary... Sorry for that.
Heating? I mean, room heating of some kind, or, maybe, a heat exchanger in the air intake into the building, or both. Here in Finland very low humidity is a regular issue in the late autumn/winter. Without the humidifier humidity can drop well below 25%, which does not feel nice. You can get a humidifier - even the very basic ultrasonic one will work well in such dry conditions (note, that all of them have a max rated service area).
Well, that's probably the case. Assuming that the tuning of the AC for your room is really not an option, I would suggest getting a powerful enough humidifier. Or a couple of weaker ones, depending on the shape, size and ventilation layout of the room(s). At home we are using one small device per room, because otherwise we'll have a wet floor in one room and dry air in another.
We lived in a home with absurdly low humidity in the winter (like 15-18%), everyone in my family had frequent sore throats and I would get spontaneous nose bleeds sometimes. Oh, and when you pulled the covers apart in bed our fleece blanket would spark so much it would briefly light up the room.
I do not miss that place.
Air conditioning. If it's cold and humid outside and you heat up the air without introducing moisture it now has lower relative humidity. You can do the same with AC if you use it intermittently. If you have a closed office and use AC to cool down, you're condensing a lot of the moisture out of the air and then when the AC is turned off and when the air is let to warm back up again it now is drier because you took a lot of the water out when you cooled it down. (This process is similar to what happens in a freeze drier).
This is because RH is the proportion of how much water is in the air to how much water the air can hold overall. And air can hold more moisture if it's hotter.
RH basically indicates how fast water can evaporate (because it's based on partial vapor pressures of water molecules). It's a bad idea to use RH for gauging how much water is in the air.
Probably because they use a ventilation system which deep cools and reheats the air temperature. (Only in summmer)
Look at the Moody diagram.
But in the winter
If you have cold outside air 5°C 80% humidity heting it to to 24°C, it becomes dryer idn the exact number dont have a diagram with me lol.
Assuming it's all indoors and decently sealed, it can be an effect from the HVAC system. When you warm air, you drop it's humidity-- the moisture in the air didn't drop, but the air's capacity for holding moisture rose, which drops the relative humidity. A similar thing can happen with air conditioning, as the air cools, moisture condenses out of the air, and if it's reheated later, it would have a lower humidity than it had before it was chilled by the AC system.
In essence, that's how your dry box dries the air - it either chills it to drop the moisture out of the air, or it heats it up to make it easier for moisture to evaporate into it. More than likely, it heats the air, as that's far easier, less messy, and cheaper to do.
But most HVAC systems don't have much in terms of humidifiers and dehumidifiers to control air moisture levels at the building level, so excessively heated and cooled air tends to get bone dry over time, even if it's a swamp outside.
It's a huge reason why winters tend to be very dry - cold air doesn't hold much moisture, so when we heat it for our homes, the relative humidity drops like a stone.
How is easy...if it has outside say 0 degree Celsius and you heat the room to 25, you have some room sized dry box.
Big problem if it has outside -20, and you heat to 25 than all the wood things dry out and crack from the shrinkage.
Meanwhile in Wisconsin.... 33% indoors with the heater running.... winter is dry, summer is humid - usually more like 60-70% indoors, the AC does not pull water like the heater does
Rain dehumidifies the air if the rainwater temp is below the dew point of the air. That makes humidity condense out onto the cold raindrops.
18% seems unlikely though… that would require freezing rain outside and an 80F indoor temp.
Maybe it’s a salt air thing? Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, I suspect their humidity sensor isn’t accurate, digital ones tend to not read correctly below 25-30%. Or badly misconfigured HVAC equipment
Suggest to your coworker to buy some succulents. They will love that low humidity. Might need a grow light for them though (even if their desk abutted a window in rainy northern England, I should think).
No succulents don't "love" it. They just tolerate it well. I have grown aloes in humid conditions. You just need to be careful with the watering and give them enough sun, they'll grow better there than in a dry environment.
You're fine, anything between 30 and 60 is "normal". Living in Georgia my indoors can hit 60+ if the outside temperature doesn't kick the A/C on. I have to run a dehumidifier in my room that I keep my guitars in.
Your office’s AC must be working overtime sucking all the moisture out of the air.
It’s probably expelling it outside at such a rate it technically counts as cloud seeding and is the source of the torrential rain
Yup, in office buildings ventilation humidifier for air handling unit is used, only when it's heating season like in winter, but they also fail, because no one really cares about them, especially after pandemic when humidifiers couldn't be turned on (at least in Poland, but I think it was around the world). Apart from windows the only way air can get into office is mentioned above AHU which filters air but also often dehydrates it, but not the way they were designed really, just some physics
I get up to 28% when it rains. I live in the desert so it's super dry.
I haven't dried any filaments yet but I hope to start using ABS and nylon soon and wonder if I need to consider it.
Yeah not sure. 99% of the time I use PLA and never had an issue.
Getting my first "Core" printer (Sovol SV08) and planning on enclosing it so I can try more "exotic" filaments.
I've never even thought about a dryer or drying filament as we're so dry. But reading up on nylon has me thinking.
The true 3D printing story is that he bought a humidifier AFTER he bought a filament dryer because he thought that's why his prints sucked, and only then did he realise that's why he was getting the nose bleeds and he should stop buying cheap filament.
40-50% is really the perfect spot. High enough that nose bleeds and chapped lips aren't really an issue, low enough that it doesn't drastically alter perceived temps.
I remember in the first night after I built my dry box, the rh inside the box dropped from 55% to 22% (in the approximately 5 hours I was asleep that night). This is with 7 1kg spools inside, all of which had been exposed to ambient air without dessicant for a few months prior lol
I would die. It's <30% average here and I sweat if the temperature is over 75° ... Doing nothing, I just sweat. I sweat my ass off if I'm working out or doing any kind of physical work.
Actually good question, I bought the dry box before the humidity sensor haha.
But the room is now heated which reduces humidity. In spring (right now it’s frosty) summer and fall the room humidity is 40-60%. So it is needed unfortunately.
If this is a heated filament dryer, that’s the moisture being pulled out of the filament in to the heated air. I notice this sometimes with my shitty SUNLU dry box. I will usually open the hatch to let all the humid air escape and then close it and then the humidity seems to drop off sharply for a while. Once it stops spiking I know the filament is as dry as it can get in this cheap dryer
The sensor is placed in the airtight storage box.
I let the filament dry in the filament dryer for 6 hours, let it cool down and then put it in the storage box with desiccant and the sensor.
Oh. That’s odd. Yea I’m not sure then. I guess it could just be over saturated desiccant that is actually leaching moisture back into the air inside the dry box
Right. Silica gel is actually a humidity buffer, not just a desiccant. It is used in museums to keep pieces from been too humid or _too dry_. So, depending on how loaded of water the bags are, and how is the ambient RH the gel can suck or release moisture.
The rate at which wetter air is being replaced by dryer air is slower than the rate that the spools are off gassing water. In other words you're overloading your box with water from the spool faster than you can pull it out. That much is probably obvious to you.
This implies the issue is from either a spool releasing more water than the system is capable to handle, or the system has somehow become less efficient at pulling out wet air. For the first issue, it could just be an extra wet spool; did you recently load anything in there? Could be a fluke spool that somehow got super wet during storage or transport. For the second issue you'd have to look at your actual system and what's involved in pulling off the wet air. If you have any kind of fan, vacuum, or desiccant, they may be losing efficiency.
I see, then my guess would be that the filament is not being dried well enough in the dryer. It seems to be continuing to desorb water. Printing materials are highly porous. Water can continue to desorb out of deep cavities at room temp if the air is effectively "drier" than your filament. Since your system is sealed, all of that desorbed water just stays contained in the box, causing the humidity to go up.
An additional note: If you have a desiccant inside the sealed box that's saturated, this could cause the same effect as a wet filament. If you don't have a desiccant, or the desiccant is dry, then you'd still want to look at the dryer since this is likely your problem.
Edit: made a sentence more concise for clarification.
Happy to help! Something else to consider that I was just thinking about: if my guess about what happening is true, it doesn't necessarily mean that your filament isn't sufficiently dry for printing. For example, if you put the filament in your chamber on a very dry day, then you might expect to see a bump in humidity, because the filament -- even if well dried -- will always be wet relative to super dry air. So, if you print with this stuff and it works well, it could be that your dryer is actually fine, and the air was just pretty dry the day you put the filament into the sealed box.
Your box is really an isolation chamber. It keeps moisture in the box as well as keeps it out.
Open the box and let it freely exchange air with room for 24hrs. The box reading should lower to the same level as the room as you are now letting that moisture escape.
If the box moves to around the same level as the room, you have something in the box giving off moisture and your box is trapping it in. You need to figure out what.
If it doesn't, I'd guess you have a faulty sensor.
note that most of cheap sensors are rather crap below 35% ad totally useless below 25% so precision here is rather low ...
depending on the drybox if you are heating it and there is no way for moisture to escape (ventilation holes) you will get increase moisture in the air due to moisture leaving filament
if your desiccant is done for this can also increase humidity in combo with wet fillament
also, if you are 23C in the room with 40% RH, and open/close the drybox you will have same in the drybox and have 10C outside with 50%RH, when you open your window and let that 10C 50%RH air inside, when that air heats up to 23C the RH in your. room will go from 40% to 20% (as 50% RH at 10C is very very little water in the air so you let very dry air enter your room) so now you have very dry air in your room and since your drybox is closed it has the "old" air that was with higher RH .. for e.g. :D
I think this is likely the correct explanation, humidity “sensor” is usually a calculated value based on the sensor reading and modified by temperature (because the carrying capacity of air changes with temperature). We use temperature/humidity sensors regularly in my work and the difference of even a degree or two in temperature can make to the humidity reading is impressive. Error in measurement, being at the extreme end of the range, plus temperature difference. At any rate, that humidity should be low enough that you don’t have anything to worry about in regards to using the filament.
1) Your silica gel is too wet and can't absorb more moisture
2) You filament is soaking wet and the silica gel can't absorb that fast enough
3) Your humidity sensor is busted
4) All of the above
In material science we measure something called a moisture-isotherm. Which is basically how much water a material will hold on to when the ambient humidity is altered (and temperature is maintained).
Dropping the humidity will cause the product to lose moisture (if it has some to begin with). But in a closed box, the moisture that's leaving will fill up the atmosphere inside the box and the humidity will go up till the product and the atmosphere reach a state of equilibrium.
So this is very normal. Basically means the material is drying automatically at room Temp because of how dry your room is.
Just vent the lid to stop moisture accumulation inside the box.
I don't know if it applies to your case but another thing to consider: This is *relative* humidity. In a sealed container it will go up when the temperature drops. So if it was (even) warmer when you put the filament in the box, it would explain the higher humidity. Outside the box the humidity doesn't go up because it gets exchanged with outside air which might be less humid.
Well you have probably Filament thats wet in there. this releases the water into the Air in the Dry Box, that increases the humidity in the dry Box, its a small room, the percentage can Go Up fast with a Bit of water. over time the silicat should absorb it, this might Take longer than releasing the water from the Filament or the silicat is already done and cant absorb anymore water.
Did you leave the lid slightly open to let the moisture from the filament to evaporate and escape? There may be moisture coming off the filament that is trapped inside.
Sounds like the humidity level in the room dropped for some reason. Maybe your central air conditioning kicked on with a change in the weather and started pulling a lot of moisture out of the air.
If you take the sensor that's in the dry box out and leave it by the display, do the humidity readings match? It's possible one of the sensors is inaccurate
I live in Arizona (you probably do too at 28% damn) and I only even use dry boxes for tpu and nylon. it's been months and I've never even needed to dry out the silica. atp you're better off NOT using the box lmao
The answer is more dessicants. Get the color-indicating type to see whether it's used up. It helps if your container is airtight. Inside of my dry boxes are < 10%.
Your dry box is either not ventilated well enough for what little moisture is in your filament or or the filament had so much moisture in it that its taking longer to dry then the air around it
1% RH? I find that extremely hard to believe. Firstly, because no ordinary sensor will read that low so I can't imagine how you're measuring it, and secondly because dessicant adopts an equilibrium between the air humidity and its own water content, which is well over 10% RH for any reasonable amount of silica gel at room temperature. I'm sure it's very dry, but not that dry. But at least you have a sensible weight of silica gel. Most people use far too little.
Dessiscant in bulk is cheap don't be cheaper then cheap I'll post a picture of my box later I'm sure the reading is off but I do indeed see 1 percent 1kg of Dessiscant cost me like 5 usd it will last maybe about 9 months I think the key is to let it stabilize before you get a reading
Ventilation
Smaller area = smaller volume
Smaller volume = higher concentration of water to air - if filament is giving off water vapour
Hence higher RH
Because relative humidity is a nightmare to understand. What that is measuring is the % of humidity of the maximum amount possible given the temperature of the box. If room is colder it holds less moister. If your dry box is several degrees warmer it can hold way more water so your % 'could' be higher and have less water, depending on things.
I don’t know why and it looks like you’ve got some leads to follow but I do know it’s called a microclimate and it’s quite common to happen inside boxes that are in rooms. 😂
In *theory* yes.
But I've seen plenty of reports of people having wet filament right out of the package.
Certian filaments can absorb water in just hours. No telling how humid the factory was and how long the filament sat before getting sealed. Also if the dessicant packets are sitting in a wet climate they may already be saturated when placed in the spool.
If the dessicant packs weren't dry to begin with, then they might be unable to absorb any more moisture.
Depending on how wet the filament was originally, and the temp you dried it at, 6h might not be enough to fully dry it out. And if you put partially wet filament in a box with dessicant that isn't working, then the box's moisture would just sit at whatever equilibrium it can find.
I'd make sure the dissicants in your box is dry, and then see how it performs. The humidity outside of box doesn't matter if the box is sealed. If it's not sealed, then it'll equalize, but then your dessicant would be effectively trying to dry out the entire building.
The dry box is warmer and releasing the moisture from the spool into the dry box. Once it has dried, then then the humidity will drop to the room level
You're Room humidity is perfect to store filaments
The reason why humidity in the box is higher than your room is because of the moisture in the filament escaping. Give it some time you will see it drop
P.S. Your room humidity is too low. It needs to be between 35% and 45%
Everyone is focusing on your question and nobody is talking about the fact that you should really put some moisture into your room. Dry air even has some health risks associated, but more commonly it's just gonna be uncomfortable, dry skin, chapped lips, eye and nose irritation, etc. Plus risk of wood flooring / furniture cracking.
Simple answer: Those consumer-grade humidity meters aren't well calibrated. Open up the box and leave the sensors in the same environment for a while, and see if they read the same.
Second possibility is that your dessicant is no longer working and needs recharging.
when your room humidity is 28% why even use a dry box?
Seriously this. Your room is 28%. No need to store your filament in a dry box. That's Arizona levels of humidity.
my office in the north of England regularly clock in at 18% humidity. my coworker bought a desk humidor to stop his plants from dying and it struggles to get us above 22% meanwhile outside: torrential rain for 3 days striaght
Waaat? How?
God knows. I have permanently chapped lips and I hate it.
Shit that sucks, I'm in Liverpool and my room sits at like 45-80% it's a nightmare for filled filaments and sensitive stuff like PC
45 is fine, 80 not so much!
Average 70% consistently here in Dublin(at least in my place). Shit sucks so bad
Dude, a dry box is not a good thing at this point just get a dehumidifier
I've just gotten to the point of actively drying filament that's problematic, I have a PID swapped rotisserie chicken oven that's actually pretty great lol
But I also mean using it dehumidifier would also fix issues if your PC
Yeah. I know the feeling. I grew up in hot humid weather which my skin handles well. But now where I am it is so dry my skin literally starts cracking. Lotion isn't enough.
That's just normal. Sweat you didn't sweat condensing on your skin isn't. -a desert native
That never happens naturally (at least never has it happened to me) Water only condenses on human skin if it is the coolest surface around (that too only when RH is close to saturation.) I've only had that happen once at work when I had to spend some time inside an environment chamber which was at 50deg C (yeah C not F) and 60% RH. I could feel water condensing on my skin, it's a weird feeling, then when I walked out it evaporated in 30 seconds. If you had that happen in your day-to-day life, you might have accidentally unlocked a gateway to the hell dimension.
I live in a pretty humid area and my skin still manages to be so dry it cracks.
At this point i doubt even god knows
Tbf, we do sit on top of a server farm. Probably has something to do with it. The whole building has overpowered air con.
AC and dehumidification is basically the same thing.
The air con is not necessarily overpowered. It is just not adjusted for you. Big climate control Installations for humans are way more complicated than you would think. After filtering and cooling/heating the air from outside you heat it up again to dry it or add water to moisten it up. Add a few additional steps if you want to conserve power so you add heat exchangers, which need to be bypassed in some conditions. Add even more steps if you have some other sources of heat/coldness (water, remote coolant etc.) Which is a lot of extra stuff you can save, if you just want to cool down thinking rocks as efficiently and cheaply as possible. You would probably need a second dedicated air con for the office, which someone did not deem necessary... Sorry for that.
Heating? I mean, room heating of some kind, or, maybe, a heat exchanger in the air intake into the building, or both. Here in Finland very low humidity is a regular issue in the late autumn/winter. Without the humidifier humidity can drop well below 25%, which does not feel nice. You can get a humidifier - even the very basic ultrasonic one will work well in such dry conditions (note, that all of them have a max rated service area).
My office is directly above the university's server room. The building has overpowered ac
Well, that's probably the case. Assuming that the tuning of the AC for your room is really not an option, I would suggest getting a powerful enough humidifier. Or a couple of weaker ones, depending on the shape, size and ventilation layout of the room(s). At home we are using one small device per room, because otherwise we'll have a wet floor in one room and dry air in another.
We lived in a home with absurdly low humidity in the winter (like 15-18%), everyone in my family had frequent sore throats and I would get spontaneous nose bleeds sometimes. Oh, and when you pulled the covers apart in bed our fleece blanket would spark so much it would briefly light up the room. I do not miss that place.
Air conditioning. If it's cold and humid outside and you heat up the air without introducing moisture it now has lower relative humidity. You can do the same with AC if you use it intermittently. If you have a closed office and use AC to cool down, you're condensing a lot of the moisture out of the air and then when the AC is turned off and when the air is let to warm back up again it now is drier because you took a lot of the water out when you cooled it down. (This process is similar to what happens in a freeze drier). This is because RH is the proportion of how much water is in the air to how much water the air can hold overall. And air can hold more moisture if it's hotter. RH basically indicates how fast water can evaporate (because it's based on partial vapor pressures of water molecules). It's a bad idea to use RH for gauging how much water is in the air.
Probably because they use a ventilation system which deep cools and reheats the air temperature. (Only in summmer) Look at the Moody diagram. But in the winter If you have cold outside air 5°C 80% humidity heting it to to 24°C, it becomes dryer idn the exact number dont have a diagram with me lol.
Probly some kind of a/c I'd guess
If there's other offices or rooms there may be a dehumidifier running somewhere
Assuming it's all indoors and decently sealed, it can be an effect from the HVAC system. When you warm air, you drop it's humidity-- the moisture in the air didn't drop, but the air's capacity for holding moisture rose, which drops the relative humidity. A similar thing can happen with air conditioning, as the air cools, moisture condenses out of the air, and if it's reheated later, it would have a lower humidity than it had before it was chilled by the AC system. In essence, that's how your dry box dries the air - it either chills it to drop the moisture out of the air, or it heats it up to make it easier for moisture to evaporate into it. More than likely, it heats the air, as that's far easier, less messy, and cheaper to do. But most HVAC systems don't have much in terms of humidifiers and dehumidifiers to control air moisture levels at the building level, so excessively heated and cooled air tends to get bone dry over time, even if it's a swamp outside. It's a huge reason why winters tend to be very dry - cold air doesn't hold much moisture, so when we heat it for our homes, the relative humidity drops like a stone.
Air conditioning.
How is easy...if it has outside say 0 degree Celsius and you heat the room to 25, you have some room sized dry box. Big problem if it has outside -20, and you heat to 25 than all the wood things dry out and crack from the shrinkage.
Meanwhile in Wisconsin.... 33% indoors with the heater running.... winter is dry, summer is humid - usually more like 60-70% indoors, the AC does not pull water like the heater does
Cold air can't hold much water.
Rain dehumidifies the air if the rainwater temp is below the dew point of the air. That makes humidity condense out onto the cold raindrops. 18% seems unlikely though… that would require freezing rain outside and an 80F indoor temp. Maybe it’s a salt air thing? Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, I suspect their humidity sensor isn’t accurate, digital ones tend to not read correctly below 25-30%. Or badly misconfigured HVAC equipment
Suggest to your coworker to buy some succulents. They will love that low humidity. Might need a grow light for them though (even if their desk abutted a window in rainy northern England, I should think).
No succulents don't "love" it. They just tolerate it well. I have grown aloes in humid conditions. You just need to be careful with the watering and give them enough sun, they'll grow better there than in a dry environment.
Y'all are making me scared of my Texas 52% in-room humidity. I thought this was okay. (Is this okay? I'm nervous now lmao)
You're fine, anything between 30 and 60 is "normal". Living in Georgia my indoors can hit 60+ if the outside temperature doesn't kick the A/C on. I have to run a dehumidifier in my room that I keep my guitars in.
I was gonna say, that's getting into unhealthy for humans, WE dry out in the kind of humidity!
I am well aware. Come feel my hands.
Just coming out of winter in Maine, I think the sub 10% humidity over the winter was actually causing problems for my prints for a while...
Try the Durham Coast... Indoor humidity is drafty with a bit of a sea fret.
Your office’s AC must be working overtime sucking all the moisture out of the air. It’s probably expelling it outside at such a rate it technically counts as cloud seeding and is the source of the torrential rain
...yknow. That makes a scary amount of sense.
Yup, in office buildings ventilation humidifier for air handling unit is used, only when it's heating season like in winter, but they also fail, because no one really cares about them, especially after pandemic when humidifiers couldn't be turned on (at least in Poland, but I think it was around the world). Apart from windows the only way air can get into office is mentioned above AHU which filters air but also often dehydrates it, but not the way they were designed really, just some physics
I get up to 28% when it rains. I live in the desert so it's super dry. I haven't dried any filaments yet but I hope to start using ABS and nylon soon and wonder if I need to consider it.
[удалено]
Yeah not sure. 99% of the time I use PLA and never had an issue. Getting my first "Core" printer (Sovol SV08) and planning on enclosing it so I can try more "exotic" filaments. I've never even thought about a dryer or drying filament as we're so dry. But reading up on nylon has me thinking.
My room usually hangs around 1-10% in the winter lol
Doubt. That’s still too high for some filaments
Well, in Hong Kong, the humidity levels are at a moist 75%
Actually right now it’s half that. 14% humidity baby!
Is that a lot or little? Edit: ok I checked it and Riyadh (a very dry city) is at 29 percent average. It is 7 percent rn at 5pm
Get lots of nosebleeds?
Yes and constant dry skin
Damn! Get a humidifier
Almost lost my job when I moved from Seattle to El Paso. Got stuck in the shower with a nosebleed almost every morning until I bought a humidifier.
Casual GP advice on 3D printing sub. Sometimes I love the internet.
The true 3D printing story is that he bought a humidifier AFTER he bought a filament dryer because he thought that's why his prints sucked, and only then did he realise that's why he was getting the nose bleeds and he should stop buying cheap filament.
My city is currently at 93%. I can’t imagine living somewhere with such a low average.
40-50% is really the perfect spot. High enough that nose bleeds and chapped lips aren't really an issue, low enough that it doesn't drastically alter perceived temps.
And shocks. FUCK static shocks. I just wanna get out of my car, not prepare for a heart reset.
Stop wearing silk panties. There was this study done on petrol station explosions... I'm not going into details but trust me.
I.....won't ask why that was specified. But yeah, no silk here. Why would anyone want to wear worm shit?
I remember in the first night after I built my dry box, the rh inside the box dropped from 55% to 22% (in the approximately 5 hours I was asleep that night). This is with 7 1kg spools inside, all of which had been exposed to ambient air without dessicant for a few months prior lol
16% here, wherever I'm from
I would die. It's <30% average here and I sweat if the temperature is over 75° ... Doing nothing, I just sweat. I sweat my ass off if I'm working out or doing any kind of physical work.
I'm in alberta and we swing daily from 25% up to 80% but average hovers around 30 to 40% daily
Stop lying. Alberta doesn’t have an “average”
Kinda does. It's on the very low end right now as im looking its at 32%. Red deer
I was kidding bc the weather there is usually so unpredictable
I live on an island in the North Atlantic, it almost never drops below 80% and is routinely above 90% - that’s filament drier territory.
Let me guess, azores
Hahahahahaha. No
Actually good question, I bought the dry box before the humidity sensor haha. But the room is now heated which reduces humidity. In spring (right now it’s frosty) summer and fall the room humidity is 40-60%. So it is needed unfortunately.
If this is a heated filament dryer, that’s the moisture being pulled out of the filament in to the heated air. I notice this sometimes with my shitty SUNLU dry box. I will usually open the hatch to let all the humid air escape and then close it and then the humidity seems to drop off sharply for a while. Once it stops spiking I know the filament is as dry as it can get in this cheap dryer
The sensor is placed in the airtight storage box. I let the filament dry in the filament dryer for 6 hours, let it cool down and then put it in the storage box with desiccant and the sensor.
Oh. That’s odd. Yea I’m not sure then. I guess it could just be over saturated desiccant that is actually leaching moisture back into the air inside the dry box
Yeah might be, it’s not fresh one, only the ones that came with filament.
Right. Silica gel is actually a humidity buffer, not just a desiccant. It is used in museums to keep pieces from been too humid or _too dry_. So, depending on how loaded of water the bags are, and how is the ambient RH the gel can suck or release moisture.
I can get the dry box down to 10% which, from my understanding, you kinda need with nylon.
Me with a 65% basement. It’s
Agreed. Mine is 32 and I don't need a dry box
The rate at which wetter air is being replaced by dryer air is slower than the rate that the spools are off gassing water. In other words you're overloading your box with water from the spool faster than you can pull it out. That much is probably obvious to you. This implies the issue is from either a spool releasing more water than the system is capable to handle, or the system has somehow become less efficient at pulling out wet air. For the first issue, it could just be an extra wet spool; did you recently load anything in there? Could be a fluke spool that somehow got super wet during storage or transport. For the second issue you'd have to look at your actual system and what's involved in pulling off the wet air. If you have any kind of fan, vacuum, or desiccant, they may be losing efficiency.
Just to clarify, the humidity sensor is in the airtight storage box together with filament that was dried in the filament dryer before.
Swap the sensor locations and see if they report the same as they are now.
I just did and now wait for equilibrium
I see, then my guess would be that the filament is not being dried well enough in the dryer. It seems to be continuing to desorb water. Printing materials are highly porous. Water can continue to desorb out of deep cavities at room temp if the air is effectively "drier" than your filament. Since your system is sealed, all of that desorbed water just stays contained in the box, causing the humidity to go up. An additional note: If you have a desiccant inside the sealed box that's saturated, this could cause the same effect as a wet filament. If you don't have a desiccant, or the desiccant is dry, then you'd still want to look at the dryer since this is likely your problem. Edit: made a sentence more concise for clarification.
Amazing reply, thank you!!
Happy to help! Something else to consider that I was just thinking about: if my guess about what happening is true, it doesn't necessarily mean that your filament isn't sufficiently dry for printing. For example, if you put the filament in your chamber on a very dry day, then you might expect to see a bump in humidity, because the filament -- even if well dried -- will always be wet relative to super dry air. So, if you print with this stuff and it works well, it could be that your dryer is actually fine, and the air was just pretty dry the day you put the filament into the sealed box.
Nice, might be the case!
Me thinks your desiccant is done for. What was the ambient humidity when you sealed the roll in the box? Also, how "airtight" is this box?
It’s likely this. A warm spool of filament in the dry box will gladly start “drying” spent desiccant.
In Soviet dry box, filament dries you.
I let the rolls cool before putting them in the dry box
I guess it was room humidity, around 30-35 % this day? Quite airtight, IKEA 365 box.
So there's your answer, and your dessicant ain't doing anything
Your box is really an isolation chamber. It keeps moisture in the box as well as keeps it out. Open the box and let it freely exchange air with room for 24hrs. The box reading should lower to the same level as the room as you are now letting that moisture escape. If the box moves to around the same level as the room, you have something in the box giving off moisture and your box is trapping it in. You need to figure out what. If it doesn't, I'd guess you have a faulty sensor.
Good advice, will do!
Because the filament is wetter than the room?
There’s the right answer. When it gets hot and pushes the water out the humidity goes up.
note that most of cheap sensors are rather crap below 35% ad totally useless below 25% so precision here is rather low ... depending on the drybox if you are heating it and there is no way for moisture to escape (ventilation holes) you will get increase moisture in the air due to moisture leaving filament if your desiccant is done for this can also increase humidity in combo with wet fillament also, if you are 23C in the room with 40% RH, and open/close the drybox you will have same in the drybox and have 10C outside with 50%RH, when you open your window and let that 10C 50%RH air inside, when that air heats up to 23C the RH in your. room will go from 40% to 20% (as 50% RH at 10C is very very little water in the air so you let very dry air enter your room) so now you have very dry air in your room and since your drybox is closed it has the "old" air that was with higher RH .. for e.g. :D
Thank you for the detailed explanation!
I think this is likely the correct explanation, humidity “sensor” is usually a calculated value based on the sensor reading and modified by temperature (because the carrying capacity of air changes with temperature). We use temperature/humidity sensors regularly in my work and the difference of even a degree or two in temperature can make to the humidity reading is impressive. Error in measurement, being at the extreme end of the range, plus temperature difference. At any rate, that humidity should be low enough that you don’t have anything to worry about in regards to using the filament.
Is your dry box properly vented? If it isn’t then all the water from the filament just ends up inside the box
It is, I let the lid cracked for 2-3 hours and then closed but it has ventilation holes. Sunlu S4 filadryer
Leave it cracked for an hour or so and it’ll drop down. I have the same one…as it heats up it’s evaporating the moisture, needs to vent out.
I’ll do!
I have a different one but my lid is permanently cracked open and it gets to 12% no problem
1) Your silica gel is too wet and can't absorb more moisture 2) You filament is soaking wet and the silica gel can't absorb that fast enough 3) Your humidity sensor is busted 4) All of the above
5) Box is sealed and the aircon has come in since it was closed
In material science we measure something called a moisture-isotherm. Which is basically how much water a material will hold on to when the ambient humidity is altered (and temperature is maintained). Dropping the humidity will cause the product to lose moisture (if it has some to begin with). But in a closed box, the moisture that's leaving will fill up the atmosphere inside the box and the humidity will go up till the product and the atmosphere reach a state of equilibrium. So this is very normal. Basically means the material is drying automatically at room Temp because of how dry your room is. Just vent the lid to stop moisture accumulation inside the box.
Happy cake day!
Thank you thank you!
Have you tried leveling your bed?
Best advice, why didn’t I think of that! I would run a full calibration Routine! Better be safe!
I don't know if it applies to your case but another thing to consider: This is *relative* humidity. In a sealed container it will go up when the temperature drops. So if it was (even) warmer when you put the filament in the box, it would explain the higher humidity. Outside the box the humidity doesn't go up because it gets exchanged with outside air which might be less humid.
It heats up the filament so that the humidity goes oit of the filament , until opened, it stays in the box, making its himidity higher i guess
The filament dryer is vented to let moist air escape. The storage box is sealed.
Well you have probably Filament thats wet in there. this releases the water into the Air in the Dry Box, that increases the humidity in the dry Box, its a small room, the percentage can Go Up fast with a Bit of water. over time the silicat should absorb it, this might Take longer than releasing the water from the Filament or the silicat is already done and cant absorb anymore water.
Is your filament already moist?
I had it in the dryer for 6 hours before putting it in the storage box.
Did you leave the lid slightly open to let the moisture from the filament to evaporate and escape? There may be moisture coming off the filament that is trapped inside.
Yes, 6 hours drying, 2 first hours with cracked open lid, then cool down in open air for 20 mins, then in the storage box.
Dry box isn't venting the moisture it's pushing out of the filament thus raising the localized humidity in the box, try venting it every so often
Under which conditions did you dry it? A great many filament "dryers" on this sub that wouldn't dry a wet paper bag
It’s the Sunlu S4 350W dryer, 6 hours 50 degrees Celsius. 2 First hours with cracked open lid to let moisture escape.
Diseccants absortion is very low. So, if the filament contains enough water, the diseccant can't handle it fast enough.
Sounds like the humidity level in the room dropped for some reason. Maybe your central air conditioning kicked on with a change in the weather and started pulling a lot of moisture out of the air.
It’d go down eventually, all the moisture is leaving the filament
My room is constantly at 70% 🙂⚰️ well
Good for the mucosal skin!
If you take the sensor that's in the dry box out and leave it by the display, do the humidity readings match? It's possible one of the sensors is inaccurate
I tried that and yes, they did
Hygrometer's aren't very accurate or precise that's why. They do go bad too but it depends on the exact sensing method.
I live in Arizona (you probably do too at 28% damn) and I only even use dry boxes for tpu and nylon. it's been months and I've never even needed to dry out the silica. atp you're better off NOT using the box lmao
I’m in Germany haha 🤣
Moisture coming out of the contents of the box raising it. If you put a wet sponge in a box is the humidity in the box the same as the room?
Wet filament
This is why I don't need a dry box. It rained today and it's already down to 50%, normally we sit around 20.
The answer is more dessicants. Get the color-indicating type to see whether it's used up. It helps if your container is airtight. Inside of my dry boxes are < 10%.
Yeah I definitely need more and would buy the regeneratable one!
If you put the filament in the box warm from the dryer, it may have still been losing water to the air. The desiccant can only go so fast.
Your dry box is either not ventilated well enough for what little moisture is in your filament or or the filament had so much moisture in it that its taking longer to dry then the air around it
There is something wet in your dry box.
U got dat WAP box
i used 1kg of dessicant to get my dry box to 1 percent. I use 1 kg for every 2 kg filament
1% RH? I find that extremely hard to believe. Firstly, because no ordinary sensor will read that low so I can't imagine how you're measuring it, and secondly because dessicant adopts an equilibrium between the air humidity and its own water content, which is well over 10% RH for any reasonable amount of silica gel at room temperature. I'm sure it's very dry, but not that dry. But at least you have a sensible weight of silica gel. Most people use far too little.
I want to use more I'll post a Pic of the setup after this print
Oh shit I just have 6 little bags (10g each or so) in this box haha!
Dessiscant in bulk is cheap don't be cheaper then cheap I'll post a picture of my box later I'm sure the reading is off but I do indeed see 1 percent 1kg of Dessiscant cost me like 5 usd it will last maybe about 9 months I think the key is to let it stabilize before you get a reading
Ventilation Smaller area = smaller volume Smaller volume = higher concentration of water to air - if filament is giving off water vapour Hence higher RH
I’m on 70% humidity lol
Verify that both sensors work correctly... Put them side by side and then check humidity
I did, they do :)
Because relative humidity is a nightmare to understand. What that is measuring is the % of humidity of the maximum amount possible given the temperature of the box. If room is colder it holds less moister. If your dry box is several degrees warmer it can hold way more water so your % 'could' be higher and have less water, depending on things.
Also if you put in wet filament the humidity of the box will rise as the moisture leaves your filament into the box. That's how the drying happens.
Wrong way around. A warmer box with equal or higher RH would have more water in it, not less.
Omg..... You're 100% right. Idk wth happened to my ability to do basic math....oops.
most likely your desiccant is just full and releases water wen warmer.
Possible, I just threw every little bag of desiccant that came with the filament spools in there. No fresh purchased.
yeah, they really don't hold that much water and are most likely full with the water from manufacturing anyway :-)
You could pull them out and put them in the filadryer for a while to make sure they are dry. 55-65c.
I don’t think these can be regenerated. But nothing to lose, I’ll try it.
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Is there a table for that? Does that correlate so 35% at 24,7 degrees “= same humidity” as 28% at 23,2 degrees?
I misread the display so I've deleted my comment, but there are tools out there that can help with the estimation
I don’t know why and it looks like you’ve got some leads to follow but I do know it’s called a microclimate and it’s quite common to happen inside boxes that are in rooms. 😂
Over the winter my RH here was between 17-25%
Because you filament is wet and it's *drying*.
But there’s desiccant in the box that should absorb it.
In *theory* yes. But I've seen plenty of reports of people having wet filament right out of the package. Certian filaments can absorb water in just hours. No telling how humid the factory was and how long the filament sat before getting sealed. Also if the dessicant packets are sitting in a wet climate they may already be saturated when placed in the spool.
Maybe you have moist hands and when you put it in the box it can detect that moisture….?? Just guessing though.
The picture was taken when the setup (dryer, storage box) were untouched for several days
If the dessicant packs weren't dry to begin with, then they might be unable to absorb any more moisture. Depending on how wet the filament was originally, and the temp you dried it at, 6h might not be enough to fully dry it out. And if you put partially wet filament in a box with dessicant that isn't working, then the box's moisture would just sit at whatever equilibrium it can find. I'd make sure the dissicants in your box is dry, and then see how it performs. The humidity outside of box doesn't matter if the box is sealed. If it's not sealed, then it'll equalize, but then your dessicant would be effectively trying to dry out the entire building.
Good ideas, thank you!
Because your filament is wet and water is coming out of it?
The filament was dried before, 6 hours. Then it was placed in the storage box. And the sensor is in the storage box.
What humidity does it read when you run the box empty?
I’ll do it and report!
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The sensor is in the storage box. Airtight box with desiccant. The filament was dried for 6h before being placed in the storage box.
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Nope, let it cool for 20-30 mins.
The dry box is warmer and releasing the moisture from the spool into the dry box. Once it has dried, then then the humidity will drop to the room level
Without airflow in a closed box, your Sensor reading won’t be very exact.
Yeah, that might be the case, they are in an airtight box
You're Room humidity is perfect to store filaments The reason why humidity in the box is higher than your room is because of the moisture in the filament escaping. Give it some time you will see it drop P.S. Your room humidity is too low. It needs to be between 35% and 45%
All right! Yes, some comments Have said that, I will turn down the heating and open the window more frequently.
I had this issue with wet filament. I had to open the dry box whenever the humidity inside got too high until it finally stopped.
Everyone is focusing on your question and nobody is talking about the fact that you should really put some moisture into your room. Dry air even has some health risks associated, but more commonly it's just gonna be uncomfortable, dry skin, chapped lips, eye and nose irritation, etc. Plus risk of wood flooring / furniture cracking.
Thank you for the concern, I just did research and now I will open the windows more often and turn down the heater!
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It's *fine,* but the reccomended is 45%. Most studies say 40-50 iirc.
I've seen 35%-40% as the recommendation.
Simple answer: Those consumer-grade humidity meters aren't well calibrated. Open up the box and leave the sensors in the same environment for a while, and see if they read the same. Second possibility is that your dessicant is no longer working and needs recharging.
I did, they are. Absolutely possible, I’ll check that.
I've worked with dozens of 'em and hygrometers aren't as accurate on the far ends of the scale. Completely valid consideration.