Remember to dry your filament kids

I love my printers, too, but I think it's a bit much to act like the filaments are your children.

As someone who happened upon this and doesn’t know anything about 3D printing, why? Does the moisture make the ink(?) print poorly?

When the filament goes through the hotend, any moisture in the filament will boil and make the filament all bubbly and not extrude well.
- Do you ever mix two filaments for color fun? If so, do they have to have same moisture content
Yes. Stringy. Some filament types such as TPU are more sensitive to moisture. Dryers take around 7 hours to dry a role. If you had a way to know the moisture content I assume you could shorten that time. Again different filament types dry at different rates.
- You can weigh it before you start drying it and weigh it again every few hours until it stops getting lighter.
I mean, it's quite obvious from the pic.
The colors are totally different.
/s

I see a bit of under extrusion and retraction and wipe issues and possibly even coasting issues.

Remember Kiddies: Unless you are printing some of the fancy engineering filaments or you live in a rain forest, it's not always "the filament is wet." Let the filament tell you it needs to be dried. If your printer needs to have PLA and to a lessor extent PETG dried to within an inch of it's life every time to get a good clean print, then your printer calibration probably sucks. Do some filament calibration tests and get your printer right first.

But that takes learning and effort.

PLA does not need to be dried. You can dunk it in a water bath overnight and it’ll print fine in the morning.
PETG on the other hand will absorb moisture within a few days of opening, so it needs babysitting if it’s been open for more than a week.
That aside, yes, spend time to calibrate your printer before complaining about moisture.
- I agree with you about PLA, I have never dried a single gram of the stuff and I've got open spools being stored on a bathroom closet shelf for several years now. I'm more worried about the spools simply aging out than moisture.
  PETG is more location dependent. If you live somewhere with higher humidity levels, you will need to be more careful about storage and use. My personal habit is that I take a spool of PETG out, run a quick test print and then decide if I need to dry it or not. It's about a 50/50 thing. And for the practical things I make, a bit of stringing isn't a big deal unless I decide the aesthetics really matter.
  Marketing has really sold the idea that everyone needs multiple specialized driers, (that don't really work nearly as well as a cheap food dehydrator for actual drying). And if you don't spend all that money on those things from driers to special vacuum storage bags and desiccants, you simply can't print anything.

Is the one on the left the dried one?

Yes
- Looks hardly better though…

Is the one in the middle the dried one?

Weird. I've never dried my filament and never have this issue.

It's PETG and I've moved to a very wet environment. Stringing and popping and a big issue here. My last place though was a lot dryer and didn't need this solution.
It also depends how humid it is where you live.
Maybe it has someþing to do wiþ þe fact þat you live in Death Valley

I strongly recommend printing out of a sealed dry box as well. There are lots of good designs based around cereal containers and molecular sieves. For extremely hygroscopic filaments like PET-CF, this is the only way I've been able to get good prints.

They are, Polydry box

Is the one on the right the dried one?

No

Crazy how much humidity changes the color

At first I thought it was a pretty glitter green and then I zoomed in. Oof

Anyone tried one of those AMS filament driers that sits atop the AMS? It’s really humid where my printer is and difficult to keep stored filament dry.

Will someone divulge their drying technique pls.

I use a food dehydrator for most filaments (50-60°C for PETG, 40-45°C for PLA). Works great and cheaper than dedicated filament dryers. For storage, airtight containers with dessicant packets keep things dry. You can also check out portable power stations on gearscouts.com if you need to run your dryer in places without easy outlet access - some printers draw a lot of power during long prints.
Air fryer at lowest setting, like 150. Then store it in a sealed bag with a dessicant pack.
I have a dedicated box with a heated carpet for reptiles that can regulate temp between 25-60 C, two 12v coolers and two boxes with silicagel, this one runs constantly. If there is a need to dry multiple spools - oven at 50 C for 4-5 hours. That's my setup for petg.
Mine is just Polydryer. Keep the box low humidity keep the filament low humidity.
Need more testing to see how well this works though since swapping filament in these boxes is inefficient and the beads quickly get used before you need to reset them.
Only do this if you have money to burn, or you are doing 3d printing as a business and at scale
Secondhand food dehydrator.
Much cheaper and works perfectly fine.
Place the spool on the bed set to 60-80°C, then put an empty filament box that's missing the bottom side (when flat) on top of it. Place silica, make some holes on the top side. Some youtuber made tests and this method lands pretty nicely in between low-end and high-end dedicated dryers