Desiccant drying tray for generic food dehydrator

If you have one of the generic food dehydrators to dry filament, this will allow you to also dry loose ball desiccant quickly and easily. Center plug fills the hole and holds all four trays from moving around.

Note about blue desiccant beads

I found out only recently that the cobalt chloride - the thing that gives blue/pink desiccant its color - it considered toxic and carcinogenic. This is a bit of a bummer as I've got quite a bit of it, and it works quite well, but I think it's time to switch to the normal clear stuff based on what I read. As it is, I use cheap digital hygrometers with it anyway so the color change isn't as critical.

Printing instructions

Most important! Use a high temperature filament, at least PETG, although that will tend to soften a little. Desiccant needs to be dried at 65C (150F) and PLA will get suuuper droopy at that temperature. ABS/ASA/PC would be even better, but PETG has worked well enough for me. Nylon would work but tends to be a bit floppy when printed thin. You could use CF nylon if you're one of those folks that it needs to be used for everything but that's ridiculously overkill.

Print the center plug as is, no special settings. I used 0.2mm layers on a 0.4mm nozzle.

For the tray, the same settings are fine, but turn off top and bottom layers, and then adjust infill for the right density to not let desiccant fall through. I used a 40% grid infill. Gyroid takes longer but allows air to pass through and looks kinda cool to boot.

It doesn't fit my hydrator!

Yep, that's entirely possible. Manufacturers don't check with me before changing their dehydrator design so if yours is different than my 6 year old Flexzion then it might not work so well. Fits mine great, though, so anything similar should be good.