Reviving 7yr old filament with a $20 Dehydrator 

This makes me feel better about how I store my pla

I found an item I printed 3 years ago. It crumbled apart as if it was made of sugar.

"Its difficult for me to quantify if the print is actually gonna be any stronger now, since i'm not CNC kitchen" HAHAHA

Another good tip for cheap filament drying is 'crystal kitty litter'. Its just silica gel desiccant, but much, MUCH cheaper than buying packets off eBay.

Now the food dehydrator is $55

time to wait for cnc kitchen to make a comment

I'm here from the future to laugh at "remember when spools of filament came on cardboard? Glad that's a thing of the past"

A note on food dehydrators: you do not have to cut its original plates. Instead you could try to find a suitable size microwave oven lid. They come in various sizes and they ususally have a hole in the top, so they work really well to dry filament spools :)

I mean, I printed fine with a pla

I've printed with seven yr old filaments, one in a bag others not. Results i couldn't see a difference. Alllthough sitting in direct sun light turned some white.. all different brands 😷 OH YES AND SNAPPING FILAMENTS I USUALLY WARM UP TTHE ROLL TO MAKE. IT FLEXIBLE

I headed up a NASA study regarding using 3D printing in space. One of our findings was that ABS and Nylon filaments did not create a measurable amount of particulates when extruded if they were desiccated to 25% RH prior to using them. They put off large amounts of particulates when stored at 50% RH then extruded.

I have experienced the PLA cracking issue too. Especially with 3mm diameter PLA. My best guess is that it gradually forms to the tight coil shape of the spool. Then unwinding the filament generates stress cracks on the inside of the coil shape.

Angus, as always, another great video. I look forward to all of your videos for their helpfulness. To the point, I was able to rescue a very brittle spool of PLA with my dehydrator. Here's how:

Hi Angus. I really enjoy your videos as they are well made and very informative. In the past I worked with a Markforged desktop printer. The machine is known for printing in nylon and allowing you to embed continuous fiber (glass, carbon or Kevlar) in the print. When you purchase the printer it comes with a Pelican brand watertight box that is connected to the print head with a tube. The filament comes sealed in a vacuum bag with desiccant pouch or two. The filament then lives in the Pelican box with the desiccant pouches and stays sealed in the tube till extrusion. The machine lays down a healthy purge line between prints unless it has been sitting for a while. Then the purge line gets really heavy. As far as strength of wet vs dry nylon. Wet nylon tends to be stronger than dry. In injection molding the nylon is dried so you can mold it then it is allowed to absorb moisture to gain strength. Some shops even place newly molded parts in a bag with some water to accelerate the process.

Interesting results Angus. I've dried TPU with excellent results. I generally print it directly from the dryer like you did. If I can find before and after pics I'll tag you on twitter with the comparison. I've dried PLA at a lower temperature and had decent results as well but it didn't get near as soft as yours either. Thanks for sharing!

If you don't want to destroy the bottoms of the food dehydrator (

Thanks to your video, I used a food dehydrator to dry out some really bad PLA. The result: all but one reel revived perfectly; my oldest filament got better, but is still unusable due to bad layer adhesion. Thanks for saving almost all of my filament!

It's definitely worth the investment for something with a proper variable temp control! Definitely impressed with the results either way!

I think the PLA snapping is related to moisture. I’ve left two roles if pla in a cabinet for a few months a while back, one in a bag with Silica gel, and one without. The one in the bag didn’t break, the one without the bag did

Angus I love your videos you’ve inspired me so much to 3D print so much stuff