Tuesday, Feb 4 2019
After the third or 4th time my printer reset because I turned on a work light plugged into the same outlet I thought I should do something about it. Some tests showed that the problem was not with the light or the outlet. If there waws a voltage drop it was too quick to capture on meter or kill-a-watt. I realized that the problem occured when I turned on the light after the bed and hot end had come up to temperature and printing of the first layer was aobut to start. Hmmm…. maybe a new power supply? I ordered one. It arrived yesterday.
Mean Well 12V power
Stock PS
Different terminal layout
The replacement supply is a Mean Well supply with almost the correct form factor. Perhaps there was a different model I could have ordered that would have matched exactly. The one I ordered had the terminals at a 90° angle compared to the stock supply and the positive and negative voltage terminals were swapped.
I determined that the new supply would fit if I gave a slight bend to one terminal of the power plug receptacle attached to the rear of the control unit. Fan, mounting screw, and power selection locations were the same as the stock supply. The Mean Well supply is slightly heavier. I didn’t open the unit to compare inards. Time to wire it up.
Tin those wires
Wire up new supply
When I installed the EZABL I’d neglected to tin the power wires. I took care of that before wiring up the new supply. The various power leads were long enough to reach the terminals with some care and a bit of re-routing. The terminals are nice and tight.
It fits
Set voltage
As noted above, the new supply fits. Barely. I buttoned up the case and made sure the voltage selector was set appropriately.
The first test was to power up the control unit before conecting it to the printer. Quiet. Almost no noise. The fan in the PS is temperature controlled. The PS wasn’t hot enough to start it spinning. Nice. I re-connected the printer.
The printer is working (I didn’t break anything). I’m printing a model of a snake head skeleton for my grandson. Turning on my work light at the “wrong” time didn’t cause a printer reset. Maybe this will resolve that problem. I hope so.
The printer was running for about 17 minutes before the PS fan kicked on. Until then the hot end fan was the largest source of noise. With the old PS I never noticed that fan noise. Overall the noise is not any worse when printing. There is less noise when idle. I’m curious to see if the PS cools down enough when the print is done to turn the fan off.
One final note: the specs on the stock PS say it is a 30A (360W) unit. The Mean Well supply is rated at 29A (350W). The most printer draw I’ve measured using my kill-a-watt is about 250 watts.