AIO Filament Dry Box Kit - Universal Expandable Adjustable

thingiverse

# AIO Filament Dry Box Kit - Universal Expandable Adjustable ### Description: Tired of zip-lock bags and needed a filament dry box, one where I didn't have to mess around too much when changing a spool or changing filament. There's A LOT of great filament dry-box designs out there, but after looking at probably hundreds of them I wanted one that met my ever-growing list of requirements. First off, the parts had to be cheap, or ideally printed and prints had to be reasonably sized. I needed to fit any box and be easily changed or moved to a bigger box if I ever needed to in the future. I also wanted something I could use with a multi-filament feeder and hopper in the future, so rollers and bowden setup had to have reasonably low resistance, and had to work with flexible filaments as well (no gaps). So I decided to take the best ideas and put together a kit. Many of the included parts in this kit are designed by others, some are modified/remixed, and some I designed myself. This dry-box kit is expandable and will fit any box and most filament spools. The rollers themselves are adjustable with 10mm travel. They come in two parts A and B, there's also two sizes, 65mm and 75mm. They're friction fit (0.1mm offset) and can be glued in to a fixed length if you want to. With this setup you can pull out the filament and the spool, slap a fresh spool in, push the filament down the bowden into the hotend, and start your print. No tools needed. No messing with PTFE connectors. No rods or nuts to unscrew or pulling off rollers just to change a spool. Unloaded filaments can rest in their own separate tube above the Y splitter/adapter. The idea was to not leave any open holes letting air get in. NB! When changing filament you might have to cut the tip/blob off the filament before pulling it up into the splitter/adapter or you might jam filament in there. It's possible to alleviate the blob problem by reducing the size of the blob with a decent filament change macro, however such a macro will be specific to your printer. The gist of it looks like this: set filament temp->short fast extrude->short fast retract into cold side of heatbreak ->slow retract until unloaded. (see "Teaching Tech"s explanation here: https://youtu.be/GbFhhh3tSEU?t=812) #### BOM - Bill of Materials: - Box with a lid that fits your desired amount of spools - I recommend using a transparent polypropylene (PP) box with an added gasket making it more or less airtight. - M3 socket head screws (M3 SHSC) - my box had 1.5mm thick walls and I used 8mm long screws, you might need longer or shorter ones depending on the walls of your box. - M3 hex nuts - because they're the cheap and readily available. - 8MM rods - any 8mm rod will work. - I used M8 threaded rods because they're cheap (~4$ per meter for zink plated stuff). - Alternatively you can use steel, carbon, wood, plastic. Anything rigid enough as longs as you can cut them to the length of your box and the 608 bearings fit snugly. - 608 bearings - you don't need expensive bearings, you can either 3D print some (files included) or use some cheap 608/608RS/608ZZ bearings. - 8mm shims or 8 mm spacers - PB4-M10 PTFE tube connectors - Get some that allow the tube to pass all the way through (I had to drill mine). - PTFE Tube - ~2m, 4mm outer diameter, 1.8 to 3mm inner diameter - mine was ~4.1mm outer diameter, ~2mm inner diameter. - Silica balls - 3+mm - Do not use silica gel kitty litter (it doesn't absorb moisture from air well enough). - Do NOT use silica gel with small particles, as this will leave silica gel dust on your filament which can cause clogs and print defects. - Do use silica gel balls with indicator, this tells you when they're saturated. - When they are saturated you can heat the silica gel at 100degC for an hour or so to renew them, (use your hotbed, oven or microwave (carefully)). - (Optional ) Sponge for the dust filter - I used a typical kitchen sponge - (Optional) Sealing foam tape(PVA) or rubber/silicone sealing strip - only needed if using a box without a gasket - I used a 5mm wide window sealing strip rated for 1-3mm compression. - (Optional) 12x6x6mm microswitch with roller + JST-XH 2pin header + 3x m3x8mm screws for filament runout sensor BOM for the other parts can be found in links below. #### Print settings for rollers and rod mounts: Supports: No supports Nozzle: 0.4mm Layer height: 0.2mm - 0.25mm layer height, higher probably works fine too. Material: PLA (or any other rigid filament) Bed Adhesion: No (unless you need it) Walls: 3 or more Infill: 30-100% (make sure they're reasonably durable). #### Print instructions for remixed parts can be found in originals: - PTFE Tube Cutting Guide_4.2_0.75: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2932635 - PTFE Tube Chamfer tool: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3121653 - Filament_4_to_1_adapter: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6246256 - Y-Splitter / Adapter: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4589255 - 608 Bearings: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4628063 - Valve: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4258097 - PTFE_Cap: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2849767 - Dust Filter: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3404664 - Filament Runout Sensor: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6097891 - Silica Container: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6152561 #### Assembly: 1 - Rod Holder - Use the Roller Hole Drilling Jig (follow instructions on jig) - or measure and cut youself - Measure your rod holder placement using the rod holders (rod groove should face directly upwards) - You want to leave 5-10cm at the bottom for your silica gel beads. - Drill the first m3 hole using a 3mm wood drill bit (a bit with a pointy end) (Do not use force it as you might shatter the PP box, go easy and let the drill do the work.) - insert an m3 screw and align it - drill the rest of the holes - insert hex nuts into the holders, use some pliers to press them into the slot. - screw in rest of the m3 screws, make sure they're making good contact with the hex nut threads. 2 - Measure and cut rods to length 3 - Install the rollers onto the rods - press-fit the 608 bearings into the rollers - slide the rollers on the rod - add one or two spacers between each roller - adjust your roller length - (optional) glue rollers (CA or CyanoAcrylate glue is fine) - add some spacers to each end of the rods, this is to compensate for the wall angle so your roller does not rub on the walls of your box. 4 - Install valves (mounts for PTFE/bowden tube) - Use the backplate and measure the placement and mark the center hole - to get the least rolling resistance you want the center hole aligned with the center of your rollers at the center of the coil of filament. - Drill the PTFE tube hole using a ~4-5mm wood drill bit (go easy on it as to not shatter the box) - put a piece of PTFE tube through the holder and through the hole to help keep it aligned. - drill the remaining 4 m3 holes using a 3mm wood drill bit (go easy on it) 5 - Cut and chamfer PTFE tubes - Filament box to splitter - 2x ~40cm - one end cut straight , chamfer the outside edges one the other end (use the included cutting and chamfer tools). - 2x ~45cm - - from splitter to hotend - Length depends on your setup, this should be long enough to reach your hotend. - make it a little longer than you think you need, this helps you move it around. Allowing it to coils with the filament reduces resistance. - Chamfer the inside edge of the end that goes into the output of the splitter with a countersink bit, chamfer bit. 4mm metal drill bit, small knife, scalpel or v bit. - this is required to let the filament pass through the y splitter smoothly 6 - Install the PTFE tubes in the Y splitter (4to1 / 2to1) - Test and make sure you're able to pass the filament all the way through the Y-splitter easily. There should not be much resistance, just a small bump at the intersection between the ptfe tube and the output of the Y splitter. 7 - Assemble and install the dust filter - cut the sponge into pieces that fit the dust filter - clamp it onto the filament before the input ptfe tube inside the dry-box 8 - Assemble and install the Filament Runout Sensor - see https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6097891 for instructions #### Possible future upgrades and additions: - ~~Better Parametric Nto1 adapter, this one causes too much friction.~~ (with optional integrated filament sensor), ~~2 part so it's possible to disassemble in case you get something stuck in there.~~ - 3d-printable spacers - 8mm rod holder locking mechanism - the rod is very easy to remove. - Humidity sensor - will probably add or build an IoT sensor to integrate with Home Assistant - Built-in filament hopper - looking into it, but might opt for an external hopper due to space restrictions #### Discarded upgrades - Heater - there's no need for one, silica does the job all on it's own. It's recommended to dry filament before you put it in the drybox. For most plastics ad-hoc heating to dry filament will degrade the polymer-chains prematurely resulting in lower tensile strength, worse adhesion and other issues. ##### Enjoy Hope you find some good use of use this. Do let me know if you want wider or shorter versions of the rollers, or if you have any ideas for changes or additions. ##### Changelog 20230802: Added Silica Container, Updated info 20230930: Added Roller Hole Drilling Jig 20231002: Added low friction 4 to 1 adapter (parametric f3d file in link)