Hi all,
I’m doing an experiment with a cabinet for filament with a small dehumidifier in it. I can get it to sit at 35%, but not much lower. I’ve sealed the cabinet with foam tape, and dried most of the filament first.
Are there any tricks to help improve performance of the mini dehumidifier? Maybe adding more heat to the cabinet?
The goal would be to use Home Assistant and the humidity sensor to turn things on and off as needed.
Thanks!
You must log in or # to comment.
Get some silica gel in there too
I’ll do that eventually to help “maintain”, but trying to figure out the active dehumidification without any other variables first.
I am no expert, but in my own research for a previous task I had to deal with for work, most everything I saw said that getting below 30-35% for even a small room like a closet was going to be difficult without moving to heavy duty and expensive equipment. I don’t know if there have been improvements in the technology since then (dehumidifiers have definitely gotten much smaller) but you start getting into issues were you are pulling moisture from the surrounding walls and items in the room.
I suspect in you situation you May be able to make some gains with heat, but I have to wonder if how hot you can go before you start seeing problems with the cabinet itself. I have seen cabinet delaminate just from being in hot garages, so I am not sure how hot you can get.Yea, I was curious about “limits”. I’d like to be stable at 30% vs 35%, then I can keep the petg and tpu in the dryers and everything else in the cabinet.
I have a couple of mini heaters I was going to build into chamber heaters for the SV08 Max, so I may stick one of them in there to see what happens.
Wood breathes. You will need something watertight lining the inside. Paint is not enough. 8mm plastic is my first thought - but many plastics also allow moisture through and I’m not sure what is safe. An epoxy finish on the inside might work. But getting a continious layer could be a pain.
That is hardly wood. And the coating itself is airtight by itself. Focus on the cracks at the back wall and it shouldn’t be an issue anymore.
I’ve done a similar thing using IKEA Samla Box (fits 6 rolls). With a few boxes of silica gel (dried periodically in my filament dryer) I can get it to stay relatively dry for a few weeks (goes from ~15 to ~25% in a few weeks).
Are you sure it’s 35% ? I’ve found those cheap digital hygrometers to be off by 10-15%.
I bought a box and some say 10 and some say 20. I ended up buying several different brands and price ranges of hygrometers to try and figure out which ones were correct.
I use cereal boxes with desiccant and without any active dehumidifier they stay at ~25% despite being frequently opened and closed. So like others suggested, put a large flow-through bin of desiccant in and forget about it.
Also is that a compressor dehumidifier? I suspect it’s a desiccant wheel because it’s so tiny.
It’s a compressor, which is probably the problem. I’m using a DH11 on ESPHome, so am pretty confident of the accuracy, it’s down in the bottom center of the cabinet. (I designed these https://nowsci.com/only-sensor)
Edit: Also, what do you mean by flow-through?
Re: flow through
A mesh like container so all sides are exposed to air. Many 3d printed designs have channels so air can get into the middle of the desiccant container.
Ahh thanks. Also, as a correction, this thing may be a crappy peltier dehumidifier.
