A Study of an Effect on Moisture from 3D Printer Filament Drying Processes
Khompee Limpadapun, Jenjira Sukmanee
Abstract
This study investigated characteristics of moisture desorption for polylactic acid (PLA) filaments. The filaments tend to absorb moisture from humid air, led to moisten filaments. The absorption of even small amounts of moisture by filaments during storage and/or 3D printing, degraded the quality of final parts, and therefore, caused manufacturing problems. In this work, the filaments were subjected to humid conditions to achieve various moisture concentrations (0.75, 1.3 and 1.87 wt.%). Warm air-drying processes are used to reduce the moisture for different times (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 hours) and temperature (40, 50 and 60 °C). It was founded that the moisture from the polylactic acid (PLA) filaments can be discovered the moisture by use 60 degree of temperature in 5 hours warm air-drying process.