When a print starts the H2D uses it’s high-power heating element to quickly head the bed. This has been shown to draw over 1600Watts on a 120V. Many of us like to have our printers connected to a UPS system and this is over the available wattage for commonly used UPSs.
I don’t need the bed to heat up in 10 seconds. I would like an option to slow this heating process and reduce the maximum power required at startup. Either by simply reducing the power to the high-power heating element, or by only using the low-power unit.
From the FAQ: “The bed has two heating elements. The high-power heating element operates during the heating phase to ensure a fast heating rate. It has a high heating power, resulting in a larger temperature difference. After reaching the target temperature, the smaller heating element takes over. As the high-power element turns off, the temperature becomes more uniform.”
Can a UPS run the printer for long enough to finish a job? Why not let it just shut off and resume? (Genuinely asking, I haven’t used a UPS for a long time and the models I was familiar with were primitive back then)
A normal lead-acid UPS is not meant to use as the main power for printing, it’s main purpose is to get your through power flickers/brief outages. For a normal 1000-1500VA UPS that you can get for around $100-$150 it’ll probably last about 20 or so minutes as an educated guess? You also don’t want to drain the lead acid batteries completely empty on a UPS like that, it can permanently damage them.
Meanwhile a Powerstation designed for emergencies/camping/etc can power more power-hungry devices for a longer period of time. Using an A1, it’s peak load when running the bed heater is around 350W, if this was a consistent load you could still expect a few hours of print time:
In the event of a real power outage it probably isn’t going to make it. But when we do lose power around here it usually isn’t for more than a few minutes. Shut off and resume works for models that will continue to stick to the base. So it depends on what I’m printing,
What Power Station do you have? I didn’t think they could provide immediate power like a UPS. And at a quick glance it look like one that can handle the H2D start up wattage requirements is still more than a UPS that can do the same.
I got an Anker Solix C1000. 20ms switchover time for the UPS. Tested with my A1 for the pic above and then forgot to plug it back in for like 30 minutes. Ran fine and had 86% left when I remembered. I really like it, you can also remotely switch on/off the AC outlets (as a group, not individually), and it has a 1/2/3W light for emergencies. It can also charge with a 200W solar panel.
It’s definitely more of an investment than a standard UPS, it’s not using $45 lead-acid batteries for power (though to the lead-acid’s credit, I was able to go and buy new, higher capacity batteries for my UPS during an emergency after I accidently killed the previous ones), and it has a lot more features (including cooling for rapid charging), but I wanted something that would handle the H2D because power outages and flickers do happen here from time to time
Exactly, it’s actually fine during normal printing and would last long enough. But the heat up process is the problem. That is why I’m requesting a feature to just have it not heat so fast. 2 or 3 minutes of heating in the long run isn’t going to affect the timing at all.
Totally agree, but it pulls so many watts when it starts that being connected to a powered UPS causes an over power error on the UPS and makes it scream like a banshee and could be causing damage to it. But it only really needs a bigger UPS on startup and I don’t want to spend an additional $300 for a UPS because as you mentioned I’m never going to start a print when the power is out.
If it’s a cyber power or APC UPS, you can disable the beep, but I think doing so also disables the beep to let you know it switched to battery (which is actually a feature the C1000 is lacking)
Another benefit of reduced bed power is allowing those of us multiple printers on the same circuit to run them at the same time. Right now, pretty much only the H2D can be running on startup
Just a thought about the C1000 solution: this should actually work 100% of the time. Unlike a UPS which is constantly converting line current to a clean, synced sinewave output, and only kicks over to battery when the line goes out, the C1000 can operate in either UPS mode or battery bank mode.
So, you could run the C1000 in typical bank mode, which means it’s always supplying from batteries (while also recharging them), and the UPS switchover time is no longer a factor. it’s effectively always battery-live in typical mode, which should check the requirements for supplying this machine.
Note this my best guess from perusing their “manual”, which is really sparse for technical info compared to most of the gear I work with.
Here in Clearwater FL, we have short outages. Really annoying. I have had in place an APC 2200 for several years and it has always handled the brief and many minutes long outages. I do not have an H2D yet. I do have two Raise3D N2’s and an X1C that can all run together. I also want to say that I bought used APC 2200 on eBay and bought replacement batteries from a well known discount battery supplier. Total cost was below the cost of an APC 1500 anything.
