Method to the Madness:
Storage methods are based off of four basic consumer types:
- Professional
- Dehydrate filament in dehydrator after each print for 4 hours at 45 degrees Celsius
- Seal in bag with 2 silica packets and store on cool shelf in dark closet
- Hobbyist
- Seal in bag with 1 silica packet and store on cool shelf in dark closet
- Casual
- store in open air on shelf of room with mild light exposure
- Careless
- store in non-temperature controlled garage under direct light exposure via window.
For each round of prints, a roll of filament in removed from its storage location. It is then put into the printer and a set print is run. After print is completed, roll is stored back in designated location and next roll is pulled out. Repeated until each roll has run once this cycle. Print-0 was undertaken directly from the manufacturer’s packaging, to form a sort of control sample. If a print fails, the test will not be run again. A round of printing will occur once a month. The products of the prints will be compared to each other and the control to measure the degradation of the print quality over time.