Depends on the filament and the humidity of the place you live in. But should be pretty much usable with some drying.

If it's not crumbling to pieces when you try to unroll it a bit then it might even be usable straight away. How usable it is will be apparent during/after printing.

Just fire up the printer and try to print a couple of benchys. Do use generic pla/petg profiles though not the high speed ones

Source: I have 6 year old filament that still just prints. And 2 year old filament that is impossible to print. I live in a pretty arid climate though. Ymmv

Would you trash them without trying only because a stranger on the internet says so?

DO NOT USE. I'll send my address and will recycle it for you. ;)

Absolutely. Just dry it first.

When I got back into FDM printing, I had a few rolls that were older than that. All but one of them printed just fine. The one that didn't print was obviously bad because it shattered when you touched it.

Dry it and send it.

Let us know how it goes :D

For really brittle filament try drying it (oven as low as it goes for several hours, or any other drying method) then run a test print.

You won't damage a printer with wet/brittle filament so long as you keep an eye on it while it prints. Worst you get is a garbage print.

I really don't recommend using the AMS with the old filament until you have confirmed that it still prints well and isn't too brittle. (Drying should make it less brittle). Saves the trouble of trying to remove broken filament from the whole system when it starts to disintegrate.

Nobody here can answer this question for you. Get a cheap filament dryer, condition a roll overnight and see what happens. Maybe don't use it for aircraft parts.

I've been using 5-year old filament for a while now, and it's a bit of a hit or miss. Most of my rolls print fine albeit a lot shinier than normal, and some others have awful top layer quality. Those are good for prototyping and nothing else, also I'm cheap and don't feel like throwing rolls out 😂 Only thing is I can't use them inside my AMS because they're super brittle and WILL break inside the PTFE while swapping them out. Other than that they work fine.

I've got some that's over a decade old that works great. Never been dried or sealed or anything.

Just dry it and print it. Nothing to lose.

Is it worth taking apart your printer to unclog it if it breaks? Just ask yourself that and if you don't care about taking it apart to get the (possibly) broken pieces out then yeah use it

Put them in a tent or bathroom and humidifier them so they have some moisture to soak up and let them stay moist fo afew days then dry the rolls and try using it. It worked like 3 times for me so try it out.

So....just this weekend past, I too, took a look at my box of 7-8 year old filament. Bought a MakerBot Replicator, then, and now I have a Bambu X1Carbon. I stored it new in one of those Rubbermaid tubs with foam seals, along with plenty of dessicant, and decided to give it a try. First, I printed a 23-minute ornament, and then put on a 13.5-hour lamp globe (deathstar). It turned out fantastic, and I am very pleased. Actually, amazed is more accurate. I have to give Bambu credit for the incredible performance. Give it a shot!

I'm still using some 15yo filament :D .... some turned to @%@)^ and is trashed others are printing awesome .... jus try it out, if they start breaking as soon as you handle them - throw them away, no matter of what you do to them moisture broke the chains and it is now microplastic ... i tried dunking them in water then drying, only drying, drying at "just below melting" temp ... nothing helped ... but those that can safely be handled and will not break as you move a filament a bit - dry overnight and they are safe to use. filament sensor is a must as they can break during print so you want your print to pause so you can reload it but that's all

I do have some old ones that behave weird - they print fine but as soon as you stop printing after 1-2 minutes filament will break above extruder .... you load it for next print it works fine, when print stops it breakes after 1-2 min :D ... weird but totally usable... so test yours, depending on the way they are stored and the amount and type of additives inside they can be just fine or garbage ... try and you will know

If it crumbles like uncooked spaghetti, it's dead. Just toss it. It'll do nothing but cause jams.

If you unroll it a bit and give it a good tug, and it doesn't break, it's probably savable. Might need drying.

I actually just printed 12 headphone wall mounts with 8 year old filament. A little brittle but it will hold a pair of headphones on my wall.

While you're testing use the shortest distance from the spool to the nozzle. In other words, skip the filament changer until you're confident the filament is good. Otherwise, you might end up having to clean out about six miles of PTFE tube like I did.

If it isn't printing well or is too brittle, don't throw it out, we'll pay for shipping to recycle it here into new filament!

Do not run brittle filament through your AMS unless you enjoy taking apart your AMS.

I loaded up a 7 year old spool of PETG and ripped off a 5 hour print in my Voron 2.4 with no issues. I have a 12 year old spool of PLA that still has a bit on it, might see if it'll print just for the hell of it later. 

Yes.. try it out..

I am using 4 year olds.

Dry the hell out of it, pull a meter or two off the spool and see if it breaks when you bend it.

In my experience, if it bends and changes color from the stress, you're good to run it through most bowdens, unless you got some crazy angle.

I've had brittle filament still print fine, but it's the concern of breakage in the tube beyond that.

Question for the group: Storage orientation matters too, right?

Humidifying and then drying and break testing would be my goto… then test rip a section off and test print it…

Just dry it and print ... That what i did with a 10 years old and roll ...

Yes.

The oven method will work in a pinch; but with as many spools as you have, I would recommend investing in a proper dryer with a humidity gauge. Some of them are made so that you can feed filament directly into the printer from them. That is very useful when you don't print too often and don't want to bag up all the spools that are not in use (though that's also a good idea, given how many you have).

All my 7yr old filament is 3mm, so that definitely wouldn't be worth it. That said assuming it's the diam filament you need for your printer, dry it out, see if it still has flex (i.e. isn't brittle) and if it appears good give it a try. If it's brittle, then I'd toss it in the trash, not worth dealing with the problems that you'd have with brittle filament.

One of the nice things about Bambu filament is the RFID tags in the spool which inform the slicer what profile to use. For an easy experience that’s pretty killer.

I’m not saying it is the best and I do tune some non-Bambu filaments. But the ease of use does carry value. And their PLA is not expensive when you buy 4 at a time (or more)

Throw it in a dryer and send it

I have a roll of black PLA from 2018. The only issue is that it's more brittle than my new rolls. But that can be fixed with some hours cooking in the drier. It prints fine.

For PLA a good quick check is to hole it with your finger and thumb and bend it around your finger. If it breaks, toss it. It it doesn’t, dry it out and use it

I've had some old filament about the same age. Dry it the clip about a foot off the end where it can be more brittle. You'll know if you bend it after drying and it breaks it's may cause issues in an ams.

I just revived about 10 rolls that sat in a cracked tote in my basement for 4 years … worth a shot some of mine didn’t even need dried

I still use makergeek spools. It'll be fine.

It will generally be usable if not falling apart. May need some drying and you'll probably have to do a couple of test prints to calibrate it but you could pull it off.

I literally have a roll of makerbot transparent red that is over 10 years old, still prints great.

Is it worth/possible reconditioning them?

The ones that are already to the "crumbly like dry pasta" stage are likely too far gone. You can try drying them, but if they remain brittle after drying, then they're actually chemically changed and they're trash.

..mine just shattered as i tried to unroll a bit. a 3 yrs old PLA+ after 4 hrs in the dryer. maybe i should let it dries much longer..

Yes.

I just acquired 15 year old opened PLA that was in a box. Put them all in bags with desiccant and it all seems to print fine. Haven't had any issues with any of it yet.

I printed off a benchy with a 7+ year old spool of silk PLA and it came out super clean. Pulled the roll straight out of the bag (no desiccant) and dried it for only about three hours.

Just try it. It can turn brittle so it falls apart when you try to handle it, but if it's not doing that, dry it and use it

I’ve recovered most of our 10 year old PLA and ABS by drying it for a few days. The only one I did not manage to recover was a spool where the PLA started to break into small pieces. TL;DR: as long as it’s not already crumbling, dry it and enjoy :)

Some people.... just don't understand... it's a bad idea to let go of that fillament thread end

I just used up the filament that came with my first printer (in 2017).

Granted it was PLA and I live in a dry climate. Was a little brittle and I put it through a dry cycle and it's all good.

won't know unless you try it... prolly not unless you dry it... 6...7

Well how could we know? Print a benchy

I had a number of spools of PLA and PETG sitting around for years. Only one roll wasn't usable as it would break as it was feeding into the printer.

Dry it and send it.

I'd throw them in a dryer for a few hours and send it.

Just do a test print on them. If it’s prints ok. Keep using it.

I've had problems with old (13 years) PLA being too brittle. Biggest issue is not feeding consistently and breaking. Print would pause but still frustrating. I did dry overnight.

PLA and I don't get along in general. I donated to my local makerspace

Send it

I use old filament all the time. I use it to jam my AMS, to get stuck in the tubes, oh and explode in a million segments, that’s a neat party trick. Occasionally I spend 4h drying it, 30m trying to get it to work, 10m telling my cat about how I’m not going to do it again (the cat pretends to be interested, the wife cuts me off)

Hell yea baby, the aging makes prints more valuable

My filament was 7-8 years old. Didn't dry it. Still works fine. It occasionally breaks and I have to re-feed, but surprisingly it has never broken in the middle of a print. And the prints turn out perfect.

I'm still using like 10 year old abs I got for free

Just today I finally finished the last of my "old stock" PLA. Similar age as yours, perhaps a bit older. I live in a fairly humid locale, so the stuff was really hard to work with. If I wanted to use it, the day before I would put it on a electric heating pad (the type used for seedlings) and cover it with a blanket. No idea what temp it would get to, but it was nice and toasty in there. If I didn't do that, the filament would break during the print. Best case scenario I could detach the bowden tube and pull out the remaining filament from the hotend in one pull. More often than not though it would break in there and I would have to disassemble the hotend to get everything out. Huge pain in the ass. Once I figured out the heating pad solution, I was able to fairly reliably get it to work. At that point the issue I had was if I accidentally left the filament in the printer after the print was done, by the next day I would be back to fishing out broken filament pieces from the hotend. Not fun.

So I think the answer is yes, you can probably use it. Just prepare yourself for some hassle. As annoying as it was to deal with, I did like having a few rolls of filament that I could use for testing purposes. For example if I was printing something that I wasn't confident was going to work I would use the older filament. Or if I was having issues with the printer or hadn't used the printer in a while I would use the old filament to test things out. In the grand scheme of things, probably only saved $20-40 bucks by using that filament up. But now that it is gone, I am a little bummed that I will have to use "fresh" filament when testing things out. Feels a little more wasteful. Maybe I will see if anyone is giving away old filament on craigslist!

Couldnt hurt to try…

Dry and test it! Mostly just needs a little extra drying time

My oldest rolls may be about that old as they are limited filaments for me. Printed just fine,

I ruined a nozzle by using old filament a month ago. I had it out and undried for maybe a year and it was ok until I got toward the center of the spool then it broke and ruined the nozzle

I've used super old filament, but dried it for 12hrs before and had no issues. I use an old air fryer with a dehydrator fuction and its been working great for filament I've bought in 2016 which I'm now out of.

these filament rolls have witnessed the birth of bambulabs..

If it's just PLA and PETG try drying it and see what happens. The worst that can happen is broken filaments you might have to take things apart to clear.

If it's TPU and it feels greasy/waxy to the touch, toss it right way. I mean it, don't even try, it will ruin your build plate.

I pulled out my ender 3v2 after a year and a half of collecting dust, leveled the bed and threw in my old dusty roll of pla+ and it printed well enough to use as a semi functional part for a camera rig.

Give it a dry if you can, I know ams has some spots to add silica, change it frequently for long enough and you should have some dry filament. Or bake it in the oven at an extremely low temp for a few hours.

Goodluck! And Welcome back to the old hobby

tengo filamento de 10 años y funciona

I did this with my new bambu three months ago. Tried using an open roll and two sealed ones. None of them printed properly. Trash them and enjoy a printer that just works perfectly vs the old junk you had to tinker with for hours from a decade ago.

I have recently been using up some at least 5 years old PLA and ABS. Tossed it in the drier and it works fine, just a bit of stringing on the PLA and a few more breaks while printing than usual. Definitely manageable though.

I have some similarly aged TPU that I haven't tried yet, am a bit less optimistic for that.

Yup

I’d dry it to get better results but it should be good. Your conditions of which you stored it in will also change this as well

It definitely need to put spools in drier for longer time. From my experience some old filament are more easy to crack. Or uneven extrusion happens.

No give it to me!

I’m using 4 year old Overture in my new Bambu P2S. If it’s old, just print slow.

Great use: GridFinity refined. The base plates take a whole lot more filament, but all this is free …

Worth a shot, if they aren’t too brittle you can dry it out and maybe get decent results if you’re lucky

Make a tree. Like a 6 foot tall one with flowers and nuts.

I still regularly use spools from 2018, mostly different colors of PLA I never had a use for. Prints just fine. Some of it needs a trip through the dryer first but some of it is good to go right off the shelf.

But I also store my filament in a basement that rarely gets above 60F and 25% RH. So YMMV

I just printed some 1 year old ninja flex on my equally as old lulzbot. All good

Yes. Worse case dry it. I've used a lot of 5 year old filament (stored in the open) and most of it's great, sometimes even better than new stuff

Yes

I wouldn't suggest using it in your AMS, you don't want to have to dig out a short piece that's cracked inside. Otherwise, dry it and go for it.