Power consumption of printer while printing  

RE: Power consumption of printer while printing

Check this out in the FAQ.

https://help.prusa3d.com/en/article/faq-frequently-asked-questions_1932

Are you aware that the printer has power failure recovery, so if the power goes out will resume from the stop point.

RE: Power consumption of printer while printing

I am shocked it is this low.  I would have thought with the heating of the extruder and bed it would have been higher.  Then again, I do get that an old 100w light bulb gets pretty darn hot.

What is the power consumption of a PRUSA printer?

The average power-consumption that we have measured, at 26 °C (room temperature), is 80 W when printing generic PLA and 120 W when printing generic ABS.

RE: Power consumption of printer while printing

Posted by: @clarmrrsn

Check this out in the FAQ.

https://help.prusa3d.com/en/article/faq-frequently-asked-questions_1932

Are you aware that the printer has power failure recovery, so if the power goes out will resume from the stop point.

Yes, I'm aware of that feature, but understand in our neck of the woods, the power can drop for a few seconds multiple times in the course of a few minutes during a period of lightning or in a snow storm.  This would probably wreak havoc with the recovery processing if it's in the middle of trying to recover and it takes another hit.  I figure if I can provide an UPS and smooth out all those little "bumps", avoiding the need for recovery, I'll be better off in the long run.

Thanks for the link, that was just what I was looking for.

Bill Lugg

RE: Power consumption of printer while printing

That is an average though over the course of a print.

Looked up the specs of the heaters.

E3d v6 nozzle has a 40w heater 

Mk52 heat bed is 24v at 6.25a so 150w

Psu is 240w, so I would say that's probably a good benchmark to use for a ups, plus a bit of overhead. 

Makes sense Bill now you explain it

Hope this helps

RE: Power consumption of printer while printing

@clarmrrsn

So, just to be clear, the PSU supplies the heater and the heat bed, so 240W (plus a little overhead) is my target, right?

Thanks for the help.

Bill Lugg

RE: Power consumption of printer while printing

Correct sir.

Can not be any higher than the rating of the PSU so would say that is a good guide to use, plus overhead 

APC have a good tool on their website for UPS selection 

https://www.apc.com/shop/uk/en/tools/ups_selector/

RE: Power consumption of printer while printing

Correct sir.

Can not be any higher than the rating of the PSU so would say that is a good guide to use, plus overhead 

APC have a good tool on their website for UPS selection, although not used it recently 

https://www.apc.com/shop/uk/en/tools/ups_selector/

RE: Power consumption of printer while printing

Have a look at this post regarding using a UPS on the printer. In particular Joan's post.

https://forum.prusa3d.com/forum/original-prusa-i3-mk3s-mk3-hardware-firmware-and-software-help/random-power-panic-but-not-from-an-actual-power-outage/

It might save you some troubleshooting time should you run into trouble with your UPS selection. The quality of the UPS line transfer transient and the quality of the sinewave does seem to matter to the loss of power detection circuit in the printer PSU.

RE: Power consumption of printer while printing

Very good information.

I was not aware power panic impacted UPS performance 

RE: Power consumption of printer while printing

I have measured the power consumption of my MK3s when I first got it.

While printing PETG and with the bed heating during printing it pulled 210 watt.

Lowest with bed off was around 60-70 watt.

The bed switches on and off during printing to keep it at the set temp. What I saw was around 50% on/off. And switching every few seconds.

Your UPS should be capable of something around 250 watt.

RE: Power consumption of printer while printing

Thank you.  I was wondering the watts pulled.  

RE: Power consumption of printer while printing

Just be careful when sizing a UPS. You need to calculate your VA (volt amps) and the watt hours or ampere hours first to work out the runtime.

Saying your load is 250W and then picking a UPS that can handle that load is only as small part of the story.

250W will be around 320VA. You don't really want more than a max of 80% load on the UPS, preferably more like 50%, so you're looking at a 750-1000VA UPS at least. But, that doesn't tell you how long the UPS will go for.

You need to get into the tech specs of the UPS to find the stated volt ampere hours that the batteries are rated for. A lot of manufacturers won't quote this - they'll just have marketing on the box with claims like "Up to 15hrs runtime". Yeah right?! It might run a LCD bedside clock the uses 10 watts for 15hrs. 

Let's use an APC BackUPS 1500 as an example.

It's rated at 1500VA. TICK

The battery capacity is 216 volt ampere hours. Is that good?

216VAh/320VA = 0.675

60 minutes x 0.675 = 40.5 minutes    Seems OK?

You only get to use about 50% of the stated capacity of a conventional lead battery, so now 40.5/2 = 20.25 minutes.

Then the conversion of the power from the battery to AC is only about 80% efficient. 20.25 x 0.8 = 16.2 minutes.

So 16mins 20secs is your base figure when the UPS is brand new. It will degrade by about 10% in the first year, about another 10% in the second year and another 30-50% in the third year.

How to you improve the runtime? Look at a higher VA UPS as they will generally have more batteries or higher capacity batteries OR get a UPS that can take battery expansion modules to add more batteries and, therefore,  expand the capacity/ runtime.

Ben.