The power supply is certainly the most indispensable component of a 3D printer. It’s only thanks to it if your machine can work. Choosing the correct power supply for your 3D printer can be really difficult, so here is a quick guide to the choice and maintenance of a power supply.
Parameters to verify
Input Voltage corresponds to the voltage of your power outlet (230V/115V), instead, the output voltage is the voltage needed by your printer, usually 12V.
Power is certainly the most difficult parameter to measure, as it depends on lots of factors. It is measured in Watts (W), but we’ll use a correlated unit: Ampere (A).
Power
Power it’s a very important factor. A not powerful power supply will not be able to provide enough power at the 3D printer and it will power off.
Usually, a 3D printer with a heated bed can drain about 15A. The best practice is to add at this value a security value to compensate for any power surges. This margin is often 200%, so you must double the needed amps.
Using an oversized power supply will not damage your 3D printer, because the printer will only use the needed current. For most 3D printers, a 30A power supply (like this) is what you need.
Voltage
Each power supply can have a little difference between the nominal and the real output voltage. To have a better result on your 3D printer, what you need to do is to adjust the real voltage to be as near as possible at the nominal voltage. You can do it by a little trimmer (V ADJ) on the power supply. You’ll need a screwdriver and a multimeter.
Using the screwdriver, rotate the trimmer until the output voltage registered by the multimeter is 12V. Now you’ve regulated your power supply’s voltage.
Heating power supply
Sometimes, may happen that your 3D printer’s power supply gets hot. If the power supply unit is old the cause may be some dust on the component wich prevents the proper cooling of the unit. You can solve simply by removing this dust with a blower or with a vacuum cleaner.
Sometimes the problem can be that you’ve chosen the wrong PSU. An undersized power supply (in terms of watts) heats up really fast. You can solve the problem simply buying a new bigger power supply, like this of 50A.
Also, remember that many power supply units (like the ones we proposed to you) are equipped with a built-in cooling fan which helps to keep cool the component of your PSU.
Power Supply Maintenance
The PSU is a part of the 3D printer wich doesn’t need much maintenance, but sometimes it’s a good rule to check it.
Firstly we must check if the voltage is still correct, because it may have been changed because of the time. Then you can remove the dust as said before.
Remember to not open the PSU to remove the dust because you’ll invalid the guarantee.
Power consumes
Before we said the buy a power supply unit with more power than needed, but how will this affect the light bill? Nothing to fear, a bigger PSU does not mean bigger consumes. In fact, the printer will utilize only the needed quantity of current and a 400W PSU will consume as much as a 1000W PSU because the will not work at their max power.
But how can you measure the power consumption of your 3D printer? And maybe also know how much current you’ve used for a single print? You can use a really simple tool like this.