I just received my Space Pi single roll dryer and tried it out. I loaded it with a roll of TPU, fed the filament out through the hole at the top and through a PTFE tube to my printers’ hot end directly. The problem is that the printer head moves a lot, continuously flexing the PTFE tube and the tube pops out of the top of the dryer. For now, I’m holding the PTFE tube in place with tape, but is it an oversight from Crealty that a PTFE tube inserted into a rubber grommet is not secure enough?
You must to put the dryer HIGHER THAN THE PRINTER when printing TPU.
This is the recommended setup for printing TPU with a dryer:
The problem is the Space Pi have the exit of the filament at top…
and do not work fine.
I asked to Creality support, but the language wall was a challenge and they never understood to me .
I ended to put holes on the front of the Space Pi Dryer and secure the PTFE tube with this inserts
and built a table for the creality pi dryer so is higher than the printer. now my TPU prints works fine.
Here is my Bambu setup. The shelf above holds three AMS units with only a couple of inches to spare, so I cannot put the dryer up there. I could make a raised platform beside the printer, which I might do.
As for the problem with the PTFE tube not being held securely in place, I popped the rubber grommet out and measured the hole at ~7.95mm diameter, which is just under what an M8 bolt needs. I will buy a straight connector, like you see another member using in this thread. They come in M6 only it seems, so I would have to use washers and print a tiny ring to hold it in place. Either that, or I go with a M10 thread model and drill out the hole a bit.
Wow that is a setup!!!
This is mine:
I Had to build the table to rise the dryer and took the opportunity to have shelves for miscellaneous.
This table was made with 4 screws 8 nuts and three wood boards, the nuts are between boards to secure them in place. at bottom I put some rubber feet.
I’ve made some progress. I ordered a Crealty kit that has low friction PFTE tubing and a couple of PFTE connectors. I also found lots of PFTE bases to print in Makerworld.
My kit should arrive tomorrow. I also found out that Bambu offers a TPU Feed Assist Module that looks interesting.
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Update. I printed the part for the PFTE to be held securely in the top of the dryer, in place of the rubber grommet. The TPU was very tight in the Low-Resistance Star-Shaped PTFE Tube. It moves much more freely in regular PFTE tubing.
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