Index
So what's the plan, boss?
3D printing filament can be sensitive stuff. Everything is nice when you only print with PLA, they say it's affected by humidity (and it is!), but the effect is negligible compared to Nylon or PVA. These materials are very picky, they can absorb enough moisture to go bad during a long print if it is humid enough.
I own a 3D printing business in Ecuador called Maker Group, and we are proud to offer printing services in all sorts of materials, including the picky ones. However, we have found that many clients don't like to be told that their prints could take some extra time because we may have to dry the filament in order to ensure optimal performance. They sometimes decide to print in weaker materials, which deprives them of a high quality material, and makes me sad.
For this reason I would like to create a system that makes it easy to keep filament in optimal conditions and keeps it that way during a print. There are other solutions to this problem out there, but I would like to design my product to be like a self contained environment suit for spools of filament. Ideally, the user should be able to place the entire system containing the filament onto their 3D printer's filament spool holder and print directly from it without having to remove the case.
Here is a quick concept sketch I have made:
Testing the Waters (Am I Late to the Party?)
I have seen several products that are designed to keep filament dry and in optimal condition for printing, however most of them I have seen have a large footprint and require the filament to be pulled out of a port in order to load into a printer for printing. The main issue I have with this is the footprint, as well as the problem of getting the filament to the printer. In Maker Group we have our printers spread out around our space, and it is inconvenient to have a string of filament running accross our workspace. For this reason I would like to integrate the dry storage with the spool in such a way that the whole thing oculd easily be mounted on a printer's spool holder.
I hope to be able to design a solution in which the spool is contained in a cartridge which rests on a base that contains the heating element and air circulation components.