Humidity Enemy or Ally to UV Printers
GK
Humidity: shop hero or shop enemy?
In UV printing, it can be both, sometimes in the same afternoon. According to guidance for UV printers, the “happy zone” lives around 40–60% relative humidity and roughly 68–77°F, where the ink behaves, the static calms down, and the printer stops acting like a moody teenager. I’m shopping for a UV printer over at DPI‑Lab.com and, during the usual deep‑dive on specs, discovered that their recommendations line up with what’s laid out in The Role of Humidity and Temperature in Cylinder UV Printing—too dry or too wet, and your beautiful prints start auditioning for the “how not to do it” section of the manual.
Now drop that into Yuma, Arizona, where the air spends much of the year in the low‑20s to 30‑something percent relative humidity, and you see the punchline: the printer wants a comfortable day at the spa, while the climate is running a dehydrator on high.
If I crank the humidity up to keep the UV printer happy my Bambu Labs PLA filament starts sipping moisture and printing like it’s been stored in a swamp; leave things bone‑dry for the 3D printer and the UV ink complains about static, adhesion, and curing.
Meanwhile, the lasers in the corner—CO₂, fiber, UV—mostly shrug off increased humidity; as long as CO2 laser tube doesn’t freeze and the optics aren’t wearing a dust parka, they keep firing away, blissfully unconcerned about whether the hygrometer says “desert” or “rainforest.”
The "humidity thing" isn’t a game‑killer for making money, but skipping the deep dive is a great way to buy the wrong tool for the job—and these tools are not inexpensive, because the things that actually make money almost never are.
Hats off to the pros at DPI‑Lab for putting humidity in their spec sheet; companies that bother with those details usually care about the people using their machines, not just the purchase order. If you agree—or violently disagree—come into the Laser Freedom Facebook group and share your opinion; it’s a free‑speech platform where you don’t have to agree with the admins to post.
We’re not pretending to be the ultimate experts on lasers or UV printers, but we do share our research so fewer people find out the hard way that sometimes the real boss in the shop isn’t the machine, it’s the air. again come into voice your opinion in Facebook.