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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • Like JayleneSlide mentioned, those elements aren’t actually live as pictured, that’s the outer casing. But even if they were live, they wouldn’t arc at that distance.

    A general rule of thumb for arc distance in air on earth is 1000V per 1mm. That means that each nut would have to be 0.24mm apart from each other (assuming 240v, it’d be 0.12mm or about 0.004 inches in a 120v country) to start arcing.

    Once the arc starts, that distance can increase. This is because arcs will ionise the air, creating a lower conduction path for further arcing. This will continue until the hot ionised air rises away from the conduction path and gets too long to sustain the arcs.

    But in any case, those nuts will never arc for a second reason; if they were live they would be dead shorted to each other anyway through the metal case that they’re bolted to.





  • If you’re getting nozzle clogs, then it’s probably not necessarily moisture but dust being an issue. Dusty and dirty filament pulls dust into the hotend, and the dust doesn’t melt so the buildup clogs the nozzle. I’ve made rudimentary wipes by stabbing the filament through some foam (the grey stuff you find in pelican cases) so that it’ll clean the filament of any surface dust as it travels through.

    For drying the filament, I set the heated bed to just below the glass transition temp of the filament, put the spool on and leave it there. There are some guides for other methods, but I haven’t tried anything else so I can’t comment on them.


  • Are the filaments still in their original packaging and if not, how were they stored? The main thing with old filaments is how much water they’ve absorbed from the environment, with older filaments stored in high humidity environments causing issues for print quality.

    If your filaments have been stored sealed in original packaging, they’ll probably print like new. If they’ve been stored in an airtight container they’ll probably also be pretty good. You can also just give them a shot and see if you’re happy with the quality they provide.

    If they’ve been stored open on a shelf, it isn’t necessarily over for them though. Look up guides on how to dry out filament. There’s a few products you can buy that do it too, but if you have a printer with an enclosure and heated bed you can use that as an oven to bake out your filament.

    I’ve got a few filaments that have been sitting for over 6 years and after baking out they print absolutely fine.