I keep seeing requests for info on the power consumption of these printers, so I did some tests on my X1 Carbon. A caveat is that I have two AMS units attached, but I don’t think this is significant.
Startup and after print finish: 10W
Bed heating: 265W
Nozzle heating: 50W → 21W (I saw the power draw drop as the nozzle approached its target temp)
Printing: 103-135W
Idle: 8W
Switched off in back: 0W
Most of your measurements are close but you have one mayor mistake.
Bed Heating consumes close to 1000W while it is preheating. I tried to hook the printer up to a UPS and it overloaded instantly on first heating. After I installed a current meter and it goes to slightly over 1000W while heating the bed.
Also while printing it is average at about 100W but can have spiked of 4-500W for a couple of seconds.
This is the case for both the X1C and the P1P I own.
PS. At 265W the bed would not heat up as fast at this one does.
Only if your printer is running on 220/240v. They use the same bed heating element so it pulls 4 times more power when you double the voltage.
What @froboz said - I did not make a mistake. I should, though, have mentioned “US power” as I did when I posted this on the Facebook group.
Interesting. That would also mean that your bed heats about 4 times slower then mine.
But yes you are correct I am located in Europe and have 220-240V power.
Given the bed is power directly from the plug and not the PSU it makes sense that only that is different while the other components are similar in power usage.
It does. Some people in 120V countries have used a 120-240V step-up transformer to get the faster bed heating. Bambu discourages this.
@holmes4 How were you measuring the power consumption?
I’m in the USA. I use an Emporia smart plug to take power measurements, which measures second by second and graphs accordingly. IIRC, the X1C peaks at more than 300w initially when heating the bed, but definitely below 400w. If interested, next time I’ll pay more attention to just exactly what it reports as the peak value. That said, whatever your method is (?) may be more accurate, which would be nice to know if that’s the case.
Knowing what the peak power draw is may have some relevance when sizing a UPS for the printer.
In theory the X1C could heat up both the hotend and the bulid plate in parallel, but it doesn’t appear to do so. Instead, it appears to heat them in series from an assumed cold-start. Maybe this is to avoid overloading the PSU? If so, one could maybe save some minutes by upgrading the PSU. I won’t be doing that, though, as it rather defeats the purpose of buying a factory curated 3D printer.
The bed heating element has a fairly high positive temperature coefficient so peak power will be when the bed is cold. I didn’t measure it carefully but the power drawn heating from 90 to 100C is something like 75% of the power drawn heating from 25 to 35C. That makes measuring absolute peak power a pain because it takes an age to cool down again.
The hot end runs from the power supply the bed directly from mains. At times both will be on there is no possibility of overloading.
A dedicated power meter that shows instantaneous power draw to the nearest .1W. I ran the bed and nozzle tests separately and did not see the bed heat draw much more than 250W. You’re right that the printer heats the bed first and then the nozzle. As mentioned in this thread, the bed is heated directly by the AC input and thus doesn’t tax the power supply.
I’ll repeat the test tomorrow and see what I can find. I have three different power meters, so it will be interesting to see how much they agree.
I paid closer attention while starting another print just now: emporia smartplug reports 341w as the peak and then slowly declining from that peak over time. Even 2 minutes later it still registers above 300w, so it’s not as though it’s just reflecting an inrush current that lasts 100 milliseconds or something.
while printig PLA, my X1C will consume only 60W. With ABS, it will reaches round about 80W.
While bed heeting at begin, one short peek at 980W. (at Gemany, 230V)
Did more tests with different power meters. On initial bed heat, set to 100C, power draw (120V) was 270W. As the bed warmed up, the draw dropped, suggesting a PTC heater. By 50C it was down to 240W, 60C 236W, 70C 231W, 80C 225W, 90C 220W, 100C 215W. At temp, the power draw cycled between 210W, 130W and sometimes down to 8W.
Wow. So maybe my Emporium is off by a mile even though measuring power is allegedly its main function. If I can find my Kill-a-watt I’ll try that as well.
UPDATE: nope. Can’t find it. Maybe someone else has one? Anyhow, for planning purposes, for now I’ll assume the worst number.
Thanks for this information! With power rates so high, it’s good to know where the power sinks are.
I ordered a new Kill-a-watt, which should arrive tomorrow, because if my Emporia smart plugs are that far off, I really want to know. Maybe they aren’t accounting for RMS? That would be quite an oversight for something billed as a power measuring device, but 340*0.71=242, which is a lot closer to what @homes4 measured. I guess we’ll find out soon enough when the Kill-a-watt arrives tomorrow.
I tried repeating the measurements with a brand new Kill-a-watt EZ measuring device, and it agrees with the Emporia. Never more than a 3 watt difference between the two when both are reading the same load.
So, not sure how to account for the differences between my measurements and what @holmes4 measured, unless maybe for some reason my X1C actually does draw more power during startup than his does. But why would it?
Two successive prints :
One long print :
One small print + some idle time 
One week of prints :
One month of prints :
(everything here in PETG + PEI textured plate, european country / 220V)
Conclusions :
By the way, my 341w measurement came while heating the build plate to just 70C.
What is your mains voltage? That might be relevant.
