Using the printer to dry silica gel packs - or filament

Dear all again!

I wanted to share with you another small trick which I use especially with K2 Plus because of it’s large build volume: Drying my silica gel packs when printing PETG or ASA/ABS!

I use these silica gel packs (mainly 50g packs from Wisedry) in my bags for nearly all filaments and now also in the CFS.

WHenever I print parts in PETG/ASA/ABS where I have the bed temp 70+°C I put on the free space (which had will not touch) the gel packs .


Above you see an ASA print I just run and the gel packs on the print plate.
As the print will run ~4h the packs get regenerated very well and can be reused again.
You see on CFS display that the re-generated packs work well in CFS again!

For those of you who can deal with klipper/fluidd you can install also some macros to use the printer as a filament dryer - when not printing! I did that with code from Klipper Filament Dryer code

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Too much handling for me. I just use the oven when I get a bunch of silica gel packs that I have used. I bought a pack of around 50 indicator packs, half an hour in the toaster oven and they’re as good as new. I drop a couple in the ZipLock bag when I store a used filament reel, and I save the old ones in my “used” bag. When I get 20-30 in the “used” bag, they get toasted.

Good idea @frankjoke:+1:

Saves on electricity too… :white_check_mark:

I do the same with my dryers. I also bought a big jug of beads and some organza(?) gift bags because I was tired of the little packs.