It seems I'm on an unfortunate streak with my M2. As I was replacing the busted fan and my botched Y motor, the power supply unit died. No idea why, I disconnected it when I was doing any work on electronics, but it's clearly dead. Didn't occur to me for a while that this was the problem, so I had to do some debugging before I understood juat why things weren't working.
The old M2 had 2 PSUs, one for the printer itself, and a separate one for the hotbed. It was the printer PSU that died, which was rated at 19V 6amps. I dug around in some old drawers and found an unused laptop PSU rated at 19v 4amps, which I proceeded to connect to the printer. So far I've run several prints without a hitch, so it appears that 4 amps is sufficient.
Is there any reason to think that I need to get a new PSU rated for more amps, or should I just keep at it with this one that clearly works anyway?
How many amps for old style 12v M2?
Re: How many amps for old style 12v M2?
First rule of fixing things: ya gotta have stuff! [grin]
Power supplies these days know how to protect themselves from overloads, so when it seems to be perfectly happy, you know it is!it appears that 4 amps is sufficient
Because you've depleted your parts stockpile by one unit, getting a slightly huskier laptop-ish power supply (anything from 19 through 24 V will be fine) from eBay seems like a good idea. Ya never know when you'll need a power supply.
While you're thinking of it, re-check the other supply, because that old 12 V heater requires far too much current and tends to overheat / char the connector shell at the PCB.
Re: How many amps for old style 12v M2?
Thanks for the feedback Ed! And for the fair warning regarding the heater PSU. After melting 3 connectors I've actually given up on the heatbed, so now I almost exclusively print PLA on a bed coated with wood glue. The 12v heater took ages to heat up anyway, and finally caused enough trouble for me to opt for this route instead.
But I think I get your point that I could get a slightly beefier 24v PSU now, to have as a backup but to also be prepared for a 24v upgrade one day. Nice plan.
But I think I get your point that I could get a slightly beefier 24v PSU now, to have as a backup but to also be prepared for a 24v upgrade one day. Nice plan.
Re: How many amps for old style 12v M2?
I don't know how much current the stock 24 V heater draws, but the total will be near the upper limit for a laptop supply.
If you don't have small children underfoot, a real power supply might make more sense than a laptop supply. The minimal protection over the AC terminals isn't suitable for casual use, but the current limits are much higher, perhaps with bonus fan noise.