# Do I need to dry filament, and how?

Dry PETG, TPU, nylon, and PC. PLA tolerates room air and still prints better after drying. Community temperatures are PLA 45–55 °C, PETG 60–65 °C, TPU 50–55 °C, and nylon 70–80 °C, for 4–8 hours or longer, then store the spool with desiccant.

## When to use which material

Dry [PETG](/material/petg), [TPU](/material/tpu), nylon ([PA6](/material/pa6) and [PA/CF](/material/pa-cf)), and [PC](/material/pc) before printing. [PLA](/material/pla) is the material that tolerates open air and still benefits from a drying cycle when the print looks wet. PC in this catalog includes [Bambu Lab PC](/brand/bambu-lab/pc), whose record lists a nozzle of 260–300 °C and does not list a drying temperature. The community list names PC without a separate PC drying band.

## Temperatures and settings

Use the community bands above, then check the product note. Elegoo PLA Basic lists 55 °C. SUNLU PETG 2.0 lists 65 °C. Both sit on the community bands, and neither lists hours. Bambu TPU 90A lists 70 °C, which is hotter than the community TPU band of 50–55 °C. PolyMide CoPA does not list a drying temperature, so the nylon figure of 70–80 °C stays a community number, not a cell in the table. Store the spool with desiccant after the cycle.

## Failure modes

Wet PETG and nylon string, pop, and go matte. Wet TPU changes behavior mid-print. Wet PLA is less dramatic and still shows up as poor surface and weak layer bonds. If the only change was a spool that lived on a shelf, dry it before editing the slicer.

## Caveats

A kitchen oven is the failure mode of the dryer, not of the filament. The consensus is that ovens overshoot and can soften the spool. Sunlu S2 and S4 are the dryers named in the recommendation, and they are not records in this filament database. There is nothing to rank under a dryer brand page.

## Where this sits in the catalog

[PLA print failures](/answers/pla_print) send wet PLA here. [Nylon](/answers/nylon) and [TPU](/answers/flex) both depend on a dry spool. [SUNLU](/brand/sunlu) is the filament brand in the table, not a dryer manual. [PETG 2.0](/brand/sunlu/petg-2-0) is the PETG row with a listed 65 °C drying maximum.

Updated 2026-10-14. Sources accessed 2026-10-14. Use case: Drying.

## Ranked filaments

| Rank | Filament | Nozzle | Bed | Price per kg |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | ELEGOO PLA Basic | 190–230 °C | 35–65 °C | — |
| 2 | SUNLU PETG 2.0 | 230–270 °C | 70–80 °C | — |
| 3 | Bambu Lab TPU 90A | 200–250 °C | 30–35 °C | — |
| 4 | Polymaker Polymide Copa PA6 | 250–290 °C | 80–100 °C | — |

## What the community says

The consensus is that PLA tolerates air but benefits from drying, and that PETG, TPU, nylon, and PC should be dried. Typical figures attached to that consensus are PLA 45–55 °C, PETG 60–65 °C, TPU 50–55 °C, nylon 70–80 °C, and 4–8 hours or longer, then storage with desiccant. The recommended tools are a Sunlu S2 or S4 or another dedicated filament dryer. The caveat is that ovens overshoot and can soften spools.

## Sources

- [PolyMide CoPA technical data sheet](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0548/7299/7945/files/PolyMide_CoPA_TDS_V5.4.pdf) (datasheet)
- [Bambu Lab TPU 90A technical data sheet](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0645/5876/0155/files/Bambu_TPU_90A_Technical_Data_Sheet_582bf8f6-1f0a-474c-aeda-9e72af3689dc.pdf) (datasheet)
- [Community source, r/3Dprinting xhbrsg](https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/xhbrsg/) (reddit)
- [Community source, r/3Dprinting 17tg174](https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/17tg174/) (reddit)
- [Community source, r/3Dprinting 1hunuh4](https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/1hunuh4/) (reddit)
- [Community source, r/3Dprinting 1v1nwgi](https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/1v1nwgi/) (reddit)
- [Community source, r/BambuLab 1h8bgew](https://www.reddit.com/r/BambuLab/comments/1h8bgew/) (reddit)

HTML: https://filamentfacts.com/answers/drying