controlling power remotely with a power bar switch
The power switch on a CoreOne is located in a very inconvenient place, that is difficult to reach. A member at our Makerspace proposed to control the printer with a power bar switch, where the power bar is located at a convenient, easy-to-reach place. The printer power switch would be left permanently on.
Q: Is controlling power with a power bar a safe practice? We wondered if the CoreOne does a smart shutdown, where the cpu detects loss of power, and then does a controlled shutdown before power is finally lost. If that was the case, a power bar switch is not a good solution.
Note: before posting I searched for "power supply" in the CoreOne forum and nothing was found.
RE: controlling power remotely with a power bar switch
This is safe, I have been doing this for years on my MK3 and MK4 printers with no ill side-effects.
Those printers are not like a raspberry pi with an actual OS running on them and processes that have to be shut down. They are more like a radio or a TV.
You just should not shut them down while certain parts are still hot and need to be cooled down by fans or this might lead to some plastic parts being deformed by the lingering heat.
RE: controlling power remotely with a power bar switch
The power supply switch is just a simple switch. The power panic circuitry is on the psu side of the switch. Core one only monitors power panic during print activity.
If your print has finished before you deactivate the power bar remotely. The printer will not see a problem. And it will just shut down.
It's probably a good idea to wait until the extruder temperature is below 50C
Before turning the power off.
I try to make safe suggestions,You should understand the context and ensure you are happy that they are safe before attempting to apply my suggestions, what you do, is YOUR responsibility.Location Halifax UK
RE: controlling power remotely with a power bar switch
I go one step further and control my printer with a smart outlet. Most of my prints are long and I'm not around to turn off the printer and my DIY filtration. So I program my smart outlet to automatically turn off everything after the print is expected to finish. I also have custom g-code loaded in the slicer to fully unload the filament after every print job so I don't worry about heat creep melting filament too far up the nozzle and causing a jam. However, the latest firmware update partially unloads the filament (called 'auto-retract') from the nozzle anyways, so this heat creep advice is not applicable unless you disabled it.
Cheers m8. Control your power at will.
RE: controlling power remotely with a power bar switch
Why?What difference does it make? I understand that if you're printing extreme materials at 300 deg. C, it might make a difference, but what about normal printing?
RE: controlling power remotely with a power bar switch
JoanTabb gave that advice to avoid heat creeping up the nozzle due to loss of power to the extruder cooling fan. For example, if you turn off the power during a print, the residual heat from the nozzle could cause the plastic to melt much higher up into the nozzle than it is designed to handle (e.g. above the heat break). This could easily cause a filament jam.
The extruder cooling fan exists for a reason. It's not there just for 'extreme' materials.