Uninterruptable Power Supply for M2?

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Gwhite
Posts: 372
Joined: Tue Jul 11, 2017 3:38 pm

Uninterruptable Power Supply for M2?

Post by Gwhite » Sun Jul 18, 2021 12:51 am

I live outside of Boston, and we've been having a lot of thunderstorms lately (including right now...). Power outages are rare, but they do occur. Most of them don't last more than a half an hour or so.

I've thought off & on about getting UPS to get through the shorter outages. My M2E is specified at 360 Watts max power consumption. A $90 CyberPower 500W UPS will only support full load for less than 2 1/2 minutes, so I might get 5 minutes at 360W. That might be enough time to dash down to the shop & shut things down gracefully, but it certainly wouldn't save a print from even a relatively short outage. Upping the ante to ~ $180 would get me about 13 minutes of run time, which is approaching a useful duration.

Three questions for folks who've gone down this road:

1) What size (or run time) UPS do folks feel is a worthwhile investment?

2) If I get something, do I need to worry about the quality of the output waveform? CyberPower boxes produce a "simulated sine wave", which I assume is OK.

3) If the maximum power draw is 360W, I'm guessing that is with the bed heater on full at startup. Once it's up to temperature, if the power to maintain the bed temp and run the hot end drops down to (for example) 250W, I'll get a lot longer run time out of a UPS. Does anyone know how much the power draw drops off after the printer hits operating temperatures?

Thoughts & comments appreciated!

airscapes
Posts: 594
Joined: Wed Jan 31, 2018 11:36 pm

Re: Uninterruptable Power Supply for M2?

Post by airscapes » Sun Jul 18, 2021 4:43 am

I have about 5 ups running network gear, computers, audio gear, projector etc.. None on my printer.. if you have frequent short blips, then get something that will keep you going through the blip ... No wave from won't be a issue with that big old power supply on our m2s

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