DIY Dry box — Part 1

Filaments used in FDM 3D printing are quite often made of PLA. Unfortunately, PLA (before being printed) tends to absorb water contained in ambient air. And when printing with a filament full of water, water evaporates in the printing head, generating bubbles in the PLA resulting in a bad quality prints. Also, PLA tends to attract dust, and dust may cause printing problems over time.

To prevent that, it’s a good idea to store filaments in a “dry box”. There are plenty of commercial products but usually people with 3D printers like to make things themselves. So let’s try to make one.

First things first: the box.

PLA spools come in different sizes, but during a visit at IKEA I spotted a box that seemed to be the right size for most of them. Once home, I did a quick search on the internet and saw at least one person using it for that exact purpose. So I bought a few 10,6 l IKEA 365+ boxes, they are supposed to be airtight, and they are fine to put 2 spools of 1 kg or a 2 kg spool.

While writing this series of blog posts I did more research and saw that several people have been using that IKEA box. I should have done that research first, it would have spared me from doing some errors.