Today I received the batch of low-temperature ceramic heating plates I had ordered, rated at 70°C. I designed and 3D-printed a simple bracket to mount three plates together, and added a cooling fan behind them. The goal was to see whether stacking multiple low-power plates could help raise the temperature to a usable range.
Unfortunately, the results were quite disappointing. Even after running for more than an hour, the three heaters combined were only able to raise the temperature inside the sealed container to about 35°C at most. This is far below my target range of 65–90°C. This suggests that even with six or more of these plates, it would still be very difficult to reach the required temperature. It seems this low-temperature ceramic solution simply doesn’t scale up efficiently.
Since the ceramic heating plates didn’t meet expectations, I decided to fall back to the larger, but more reliable, PTC solution. I quickly redesigned and printed a new base with an integrated filament roller, allowing me to check whether the internal space could still accommodate a PTC module and fan.
After a quick fitting test, it seemed like the space was still sufficient. So I ran another full drying test using PTC + fan + desiccant, to verify the performance within the new layout. The results showed that a 100W PTC module could successfully heat and stabilize the internal temperature at around 65°C. If I want to reach a higher range, I’ll likely need to swap in a 150W PTC instead.
With the latest round of testing complete, I’ve now finalized the design direction for this project. The setup will use a 150W PTC heating module with a plastic shell, paired with a 0.5W DC cooling fan, and a dedicated chamber for desiccant packs. These components will be mounted together on the base, along with four planetary gear-style filament rollers. The result is a sealed filament storage system with built-in drying functionality – capable of supporting both continuous drying and real-time printing.
The next step will be to take accurate measurements of the key components,
so I can model them in sharp3D and design a more compact, integrated layout for the final build.
Since the system will operate at higher temperatures during drying, I’m also considering printing this version using ABS filament instead of PLA or PETG. But that means I’ll first need to test my printer’s ability to handle ABS properly – so far I’ve only worked with low-temp materials like PLA and PETG.
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