And more strangely, does it suddenly go bad?
I printed this pair of glasses with a roll of ugly bright green PLA I use to print prototypes or silly things with - because, well, it’s ugly - at the last minute to go to a party where the idea is to not look too serious.
But it took me three tries: the nose bridge readily broke off the first print without even trying very hard, and one hinge split in the middle before I could even drive a pin through it. I was really careful with this third print and I managed to complete the assembly and leave to go to the venue.
But it’s really weird: this roll of PLA had been in the printer’s room for at least 2 years, I and others have printed a million things with it without any problems as recently as last week - including multiple iterations of these glasses - and today the prints feel “dry”, or less “waxy” that other PLA parts when I file them smooth, and they’re really brittle.
Also, it’s winter and here up north, it gets really dry in the winter - like 15% humidity - so I’m pretty sure the material is quite dry.
What gives? Any idea?
Just because the room is currently dry doesn’t mean the filament is dry. But that said filament doesn’t suddenly go bad, it takes time for it to absorb humidity and start having it’s problems.
If something suddenly went bad I’d be looking at your printer. As the other person said check your nozzle for clogs, double check the nozzle itself didn’t get damaged (or maybe just replace it anyways) And generally check it’s calibration.
It’s been below freezing and super-dry since October here. So I’m pretty sure the filament had time to dry “naturally” - if that’s even a thing.
As for the printer, I printed a bunch of stuff in PLA and PETG before using the green filament, no problems. But yeah, maybe something went out of whack just as I switched filament. I’ll check tomorrow. Thanks!
Nah, it’s regularly 5% humidity here in Colorado and even a single slightly humid day (20%) is enough to wreck the filament. I’ve resorted to actually drying my filament and storing it enclosed and my print quality went up dramatically.
I’m not sure PLA will give up moisture easily even if the humidity of the air is low - might need heat to actually dry it out sufficiently
Yeah it’s not. I learned that the hard way, years of thinking it would but then as soon as I switched to drying all my prints increased in quality by a factor of ten.
Hopefully I experience the same thing, just ordered the Creality Dryer because I’ve been having print issues with PLA as well, though my problem might also be a clogged nozzle since the problem started after trying some PETG prints…
Clogged nozzles suck. I can usually tell on those because the print quality goes to shit in the middle of a print.