3DPrinting
3DPrinting is a place where makers of all skill levels and walks of life can learn about and discuss 3D printing and development of 3D printed parts and devices.
The r/functionalprint community is now located at: or !functionalprint@fedia.io
There are CAD communities available at: !cad@lemmy.world or !freecad@lemmy.ml
Rules
-
No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. Code of Conduct.
-
Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.
-
No porn (NSFW prints are acceptable but must be marked NSFW)
-
No Ads / Spamming / Guerrilla Marketing
-
Do not create links to reddit
-
If you see an issue please flag it
-
No guns
-
No injury gore posts
If you need an easy way to host pictures, https://catbox.moe/ may be an option. Be ethical about what you post and donate if you are able or use this a lot. It is just an individual hosting content, not a company. The image embedding syntax for Lemmy is 
Moderation policy: Light, mostly invisible
view the rest of the comments
Petg is the best all-around choice for structural applications that is easy out of the box.
I wouldn't worry about chemical compatibility with laundry detergent, but if you can find the relevant ingredients there are many compatibility charts you can look for. It's not straightforward for most common filaments though.
For the first case, if you want to push a little deeper I'd suggest carbon-filled petg. You would need to buy a hardened nozzle for it.
For outdoor applications, you could look into Asa.
I've read that PETG is susceptible to moisture. If I plan to get PETG, do I need to vacuum seal the filament after use or a filament dryer? It's not super humid here but it can hit like 70% RH on a bad day.
Every filament - literally 100% of them - will print better when dry. Brand new filament can be wet. PLA, sitting in my printer for a couple weeks, can get brittle enough from absorbed moisture to crack in a dozen places in the ptfe feed tube. So yeah I guess petg is moisture sensitive, but my take is that everything is. So I would recommend a filament dryer, and using it on new spools and spools that haven't been used in a while.
Vacuum sealing will help, but I still dry filament after storing in vacuum sealed containers.
That said, you could also just wait until you see signs of wet filament before drying (stringing, bad surface finish, etc).
I saw some debunking videos that said the opposite unless you live somewhere extremely humid. But I do remember there are certain filament types that benefit greatly from being dry and IIRC PETG was one of them.
I live in a dry climate. Trust me, dry your PETG.
Store filament in a big plastic tub with a kg of colour change silica. But yes a filament dryer is a good investment too. Just a single roll one will do.
Is that better than vacuum sealing them? Vacuum sealers are pretty cheap IIRC.
Your best hope for storage is it not getting much wetter, ziploc bags with silica are fine, a tub is easier to paw through and grab what you need quickly.
A drier will actually refresh a roll and get it printing close to new again. Look for excess stringing for the early signs, and the filament bubbling and/or popping as it comes out of the nozzle for extreme signs of wetness.
I'm in a fairly dry environment, I'll happily leave a roll on the printer for a week without adverse effects. But always store an opened roll off the printer in the tub.
Dry and then store in sealed container with silica gel. Silica will maintain dryness, but will not dry filament by itself.
Also, containers must have a seal of some kind. Regular plastic tubs will let some moisture in. For a few days or a couple of weeks that'll be fine, but over a month they'll let moisture in. Get vacuum bags.
There are pretty cheap reusable vacuum bags that use a little pump. I use a cheap kitchen vacuum machine, and regular food storage vacuum bags.