Hello,

I put my homemade 3D printer in the garage when I moved 2 years ago, the filaments I had were maybe 2 years old and worked well.

I bulk bought them on aliexpress or maybe alibaba.

Now, the printer needs a refreshing, a bit of all kind of electrical & mechanical stuff and also figuring out how to run it from my new computer, and I wonder if I should buy some new filament so that I won’t have to care about any old filament problems or what do you think? Is my filament dead or maybe ok?

Thanks!

Edit: thank you all!

I’ll go with buy a new high quality one to get everything up and running, and then I’ll check out the quality of the old spools. Who are stored open, but in a airtight box with a kilo of, now grey, alibaba deciccant pellets.

  • @[email protected]English
    2•2 days ago

    If you’re getting nozzle clogs, then it’s probably not necessarily moisture but dust being an issue. Dusty and dirty filament pulls dust into the hotend, and the dust doesn’t melt so the buildup clogs the nozzle. I’ve made rudimentary wipes by stabbing the filament through some foam (the grey stuff you find in pelican cases) so that it’ll clean the filament of any surface dust as it travels through.

    For drying the filament, I set the heated bed to just below the glass transition temp of the filament, put the spool on and leave it there. There are some guides for other methods, but I haven’t tried anything else so I can’t comment on them.

    • @[email protected]English
      1•2 days ago

      Hmm I don’t see visible dust on it but maybe there’s just very light dust or it blends in with the grey filament I’m using. I’ll give that a try!

      My last print it did eventually finish but I had to pause the print to do a cold pull multiple times.