Needed specs for converting to 24v bed

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adarcher
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Needed specs for converting to 24v bed

Post by adarcher »

I see a lot of talk of doing this conversion, and a few people mention having a 24V PSU just sitting around that "is more than capable", but I'm wondering what are the specs of a 24V PSU I should shop for if I don't have these things at hand. I'm thinking of wattage and connections, but wondering if there are other features I would need as well.

The voltage drop needs for the rest of the components is more spelled out in the conversations, but a summary of that again here would be helpful for anyone else who'd like all the information in one place.

Thanks in advance for any tips. I've been wanting to do this for months, but now I'm getting antsy and would like to get this possibly finished in the next week or so. Waiting 45 min for 80C is really dampening my printing mood :(
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Re: Needed specs for converting to 24v bed

Post by IMBoring25 »

Even just going to a 12V, 29 or 30A industrial power supply like the ones in the new kits would probably help significantly.

If you want upgrades, once you have the Solid State Relay, everything but the bed should comfortably run on a 15A supply. The bed should be a resistance slightly over 1 ohm, so whatever voltage you want to run will also be roughly the amperage for which the circuit needs to be designed. I intended mine to run at 20V and 20A (I conservatively spec'ed a 30A supply) in order to stay under the ampacity of 12 gauge wire (for which I still had to drill out the center hole). The standalone 12V supply I wired in while waiting for parts is doing well enough I'm just running it for now.
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Re: Needed specs for converting to 24v bed

Post by Xenocrates »

So, I might as well give a hand spelling things out.

Loads on the power supply:
Heated bed: 1-1.1 ohms. Total current draw, 22-24A.
Motors: ~.8A each, 3.2A total (assuming single extrusion, and not lowering current from the defaults)
Hotend: ~2A per heater cartridge. Do not attempt to use the stock resistors, or a 12V cartridge, as that will end up drawing ~160W briefly, before the leads to it or the fuse gives up the ghost under 6A of load.
Cooling fans: these should draw a small load. Much less than 1A total unless you have some real in-efficient enourmous fans (For example a 200MM fan has a .3A draw in many cases, and is total overkill for part or hotend cooling).
Overall, I would not recommend going 24V totally with less than a 35A power supply, and more likely a 40A one I recommend either a Meanwell SE-1000-24 for it's cost (40$ cheaper than the RSP model at 177$), or the RSP-1000-24 at 215$ for it not having large blade terminals that carry the 24V current, instead having more normal screw terminals. Both of these supplies are 40A+, and feature some nice things like a remote on-off, and voltage sensing. That makes it a lot easier and saner to wire them into a printer without having to worry too much.

But you will have to change the heated bed wiring, add a solid state relay to control that current, and change over all the fans you use and the heater cartridge or resistors in the hotend. If you have any LED's running off the power supply, such as chamber lights or an illuminated switch, those need to be checked for 24V compatibility (Probably not), and either have a resistor added to reduce the voltage drop, have two sets wired in series to accomplish the same thing, or be changed out.

You're looking at a price tag that's probably around 300$ to do everything, plus shipping from at least 3 places (Hotend or heater cartridge vendor, possibly amazon, Mouser or similar for the power supplies, and Auber Instruments for the SSR). I would also very much recomend that if such an upgrade is carried out, silicone jacketed wire is used for the heated bed connection (10 gauge is what I used, but it doesn't fit particularly well the way I have it wired. If you have a higher bed spacing or are more willing to drill through the plate, it will work better. I'm just going to use FSR's which will lift the bed anyways and be happy with that)

You can also take the RC hobbyist route, and isolate DC grounds in a power supply, then wire it in series with another one, or buy it off the shelf. But while these are cheaper ($75 + shipping), they add to the odds of something going wrong, and unlike Meanwell supplies, it's hard to get anyone to stand behind them if they blow up. It's for the same reason I don't recommend you buy an Ebay or Amazon power supply for cheap (besides the obvious issues of many of those listings not being at all clear and others being clear lies, and there being few units at those wattages)

Now, some stuff you really don't need to do, but I'm going to recommend you do anyways as you'll be tearing up a large chunk of the wiring to do this, and making a LOT of power available. First, I'm going to recommend you get a nice hefty bus bar which supports individual fusing such as this, and then have a 30A fuse for the heated bed, going to the SSR, and 5A fuses in the other 3 going to the Rambo supplies (perhaps a 3A for the one going to the heated bed terminal on the Rambo as it's only switching a relay now, and replace the 15A one on the board too). Run 8 gauge wire from the power supply to the bus, and 10 to the heated bed. Beyond that, 14G should be more than enough for the other branches and is easy to work with. If you don't already have a decent soldering station with temperature control, get one. Soldering the wire to the heated bed works a lot better with more than the 25-40W the simple plug it into the wall home depot specials can muster. Nice benefit for you is that if you use 5A fuses in the distribution block and 10A on the Rambo, then if you blow anything you can hit up a wallmart or any other shop for new ones rather than ordering them. I will also recommend using a terminal block in the top to handle power going to the hotend and fans. It makes it much easier to work with, and depending on the style you can either get them rather cheaply (I paid less than 5$ for a 14 position 20A one), or with lots and lots of connections and other nice features like being able to toss a fused blade in or having individual screw for up to 4 12G wires if you want to spring for some DIN rail terminal blocks

Feel free to ask any questions you (or anyone else has). If I don't have an answer, I can run it by the industrial electronics folks fairly quickly.
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Qdeathstar
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Re: Needed specs for converting to 24v bed

Post by Qdeathstar »

Is there even a reason to upgrade anything other than the heatbed to 24v? I know I heard that it can help .9 stepper motors and maybe your hotend heats up faster... but... what other benefits are there?

what's the cheapest you could do just the bed for....
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Re: Needed specs for converting to 24v bed

Post by adarcher »

IMBoring25 wrote:Even just going to a 12V, 29 or 30A industrial power supply like the ones in the new kits would probably help significantly.

If you want upgrades, once you have the Solid State Relay, everything but the bed should comfortably run on a 15A supply. The bed should be a resistance slightly over 1 ohm, so whatever voltage you want to run will also be roughly the amperage for which the circuit needs to be designed. I intended mine to run at 20V and 20A (I conservatively spec'ed a 30A supply) in order to stay under the ampacity of 12 gauge wire (for which I still had to drill out the center hole). The standalone 12V supply I wired in while waiting for parts is doing well enough I'm just running it for now.
How's the performance of your 12V industrial power supply? I am mostly excited about the minutes of wait for 90C instead of almost an hour (if I don't put a hotpad over the bed to help it).

If I could get 90C in 15-20 min, or somewhere close to that, I think I'd be convinced not to go 24V, but I haven't ever seen someone say they could do that.

@Xenocrates
Thanks for all that info! I do plan to "do it right" and make everything safe and matched up, if I do go through with this. I'm even thinking of converting everything to 24V, just to reduce the amount of components and worries--already found the heater cartridge and fans.
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Re: Needed specs for converting to 24v bed

Post by Xenocrates »

Qdeathstar wrote:Is there even a reason to upgrade anything other than the heatbed to 24v? I know I heard that it can help .9 stepper motors and maybe your hotend heats up faster... but... what other benefits are there?

what's the cheapest you could do just the bed for....
There is some reason, if you want to handle a lot of wattage on the hotend. Say you have a mixing hotend that's 5 in, 1 out. That will require a lot of mass, so you want power to apply, and don't really want a giant MOSFET. Another reason might be you want to use some industrial control electronics like relays. Those can be gotten in 24VDC flavors pretty easily and cheaply, but 12V is sometimes more expensive. The stepper motors will definitely see a benefit if you push towards the top end of their travel range or use really high microstepping, as the higher voltage lets the current rise to where you want it faster thanks to the magic of the inductance time constant.

Just the bed, I would say the cheapest you could do it is ~95$. 75$ for a power supply (cheapest approach would be a pair of old server power supplies linked together. You can get those for 75$ from lipoconnectionsolutions), 20$ for the Auber SSR (I would not go cheaper, as it's such a safety critical component),5$ for a switch and connector and 5$ for 10 gauge silicone wire at the local RC shop. Of course, this is ignoring shipping. Two or more places to order from, probably more than 20$ for that as well. So it's a chunk of change to spend.

Adarcher, 12V is 12V. You'll get the same amperage from it no matter if it's an ATX or an industrial supply. I have rock solid voltage, but see ~43 minutes to 95 degrees. I do have a heatspreader, but not glass. YMMV. to increase speed, you need to drop the resistance of the bed to increase amperage, or increase voltage. I think you'd be pleased with the speed of 24V, given Mike's results here. I'll let you know how fast mine goes once I get it running.
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IMBoring25
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Re: Needed specs for converting to 24v bed

Post by IMBoring25 »

12V is 12V, but some of those of us on ATX supplies aren't seeing 12V under load. Before I moved the bed to its own supply, both the bed and hot end were struggling to reach temperature, especially simultaneously. With its own 20-amp supply pushing ~12A so it's not even breathing heavily, the bed is rock-steady and the hot end (which is still driven by the old ATX supply) still struggles.

I do recollect contacting support because I was concerned that my bed seemed lower-resistance than it should be, so I may have the only one that will do this, but I went ahead and ran a room-temperature to 90C cycle on each printer.

Rostock Max v2, 12V dedicated PSU through SSR, Kapton over glass, no heat spreader: 11 minutes.
Modified Mendel, 20V dedicated PSU through SSR, Kapton over glass, with heat spreader: 2 minutes.

I don't have access to both leads without disassembling something but am fairly sure I still have that supply set on exactly 12V. It was last used to power the whole Mendel, which was having a problem melting down heat bed terminals on its Melzis at that time, so I don't think I'd have turned it up.
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Re: Needed specs for converting to 24v bed

Post by adarcher »

IMBoring25 wrote:Rostock Max v2, 12V dedicated PSU through SSR, Kapton over glass, no heat spreader: 11 minutes.
Modified Mendel, 20V dedicated PSU through SSR, Kapton over glass, with heat spreader: 2 minutes.
Sounds like just having a dedicated PSU is the way to go from those numbers... the 24v mod would need that much rework plus some, and I'm kind of addicted to efficiency :lol:

I'll have to read up on heat spreaders as well. I've heard about them, but I must not be casually looking at the right places for 3d printer info if I've not seen that drastic of a difference before.
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Re: Needed specs for converting to 24v bed

Post by Jimustanguitar »

I've got a Rostock with a 700 something watt 24V PSU, and the only thing I'm actually running at 24 is the bed. I've got one of those Amazon step down converters on everything else, and it works out great. The heatup time is amazing, and I don't want for anything else. (not that voltage can fix, anyway :)

My other large machine is 24V on everything except the bed (it's 110VAC) and while I believe that the higher voltage helps with fast motion on my 400 step motors, as far as everything else is concerned, there wasn't a deficiency that it fixed or improved on - the experience is the same. Really, it only made things difficult to find fans and accessories that were compatible.

I'd venture to say that I'd only do full 24V on a new build and wouldn't bother with converting everything on an existing machine. The large 24V PSU and the step down fits the bill nicely for me.
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Re: Needed specs for converting to 24v bed

Post by joe »

These work awesomely. Super simple . They can make whatever size you need. It heats up the bed to 65c in about 2 minutes and 110c in 5minutes. http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Dia-10-Round-Sil ... SwyQtVn9zY
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Re: Needed specs for converting to 24v bed

Post by adarcher »

Looking at the rambo board and the online instructions, it says the heat bed has it's own power. What would be the outcome of just plugging the dedicated power supply into that terminal only?
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Re: Needed specs for converting to 24v bed

Post by Xenocrates »

12V, nothing major. it's within the amperage limits until it gets to around 14V (Note that the fuse really doesn't like being loaded like that long term, but a 20A fuse in that socket defeats the purpose of the fuse, as it won't protect the circuit properly). with 24V, you will blow the fuse as soon as it switches on (Delivering a 20-24A current through a 15A fuse). If you put a 25A fuse in, then you'd melt the board and terminals. But it does work independently at least somewhat. It's one of the nicest features of the Rambo.
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Re: Needed specs for converting to 24v bed

Post by adarcher »

Xenocrates wrote:12V, nothing major. it's within the amperage limits until it gets to around 14V (Note that the fuse really doesn't like being loaded like that long term, but a 20A fuse in that socket defeats the purpose of the fuse, as it won't protect the circuit properly). with 24V, you will blow the fuse as soon as it switches on (Delivering a 20-24A current through a 15A fuse). If you put a 25A fuse in, then you'd melt the board and terminals. But it does work independently at least somewhat. It's one of the nicest features of the Rambo.
OK, so for giggles, I was thinking of just trying out putting an old ATX psu on that and powering it on separately to see if that did anything. Sounds like that'll do no harm since it's just 12V?
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Re: Needed specs for converting to 24v bed

Post by Xenocrates »

An ATX power supply, especially an older one, shouldn't harm the Rambo. But they don't do well at regulating for fluctuating heavy loads. A large number of them will have issues supplying consistent voltages when you're switching the load almost entirely on and off, although perhaps the higher switching rate would help. You might also get some better results from adding a load to the 5V rail on the power supply.
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Re: Needed specs for converting to 24v bed

Post by adarcher »

I put the original psu on everything but the bed and a newer, higher quality one on the bed. Everything worked, but no speed up.

I added a heat spreader last night and it's down to 30min to get to 95C. I've got to stop playing around though. I'll pick this up next week.

Thanks for all the help so far.
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Re: Needed specs for converting to 24v bed

Post by Qdeathstar »

That's interesting... for me, it seemed to take a little longer to get to temp with the heat spreader. But it seems to be more stable after getting to temp.

I really want to do the conversion.... but if it's $100 to do it right, there are other upgrades to consider first.


I can't decide if I want to get a duet and ir leveling or the he180 keeping the Rambo....


if I go the duet route I need about $325, for the he180 and rasberry pie + screen it's around $200 and an easier upgrade....

the downside with the second route is that it means I'm not going dual extruder, with a cyclops..... which I had planned on....
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Re: Needed specs for converting to 24v bed

Post by CodonExe »

Qdeathstar wrote:That's interesting... for me, it seemed to take a little longer to get to temp with the heat spreader. But it seems to be more stable after getting to temp.

I really want to do the conversion.... but if it's $100 to do it right, there are other upgrades to consider first.


I can't decide if I want to get a duet and ir leveling or the he180 keeping the Rambo....


if I go the duet route I need about $325, for the he180 and rasberry pie + screen it's around $200 and an easier upgrade....

the downside with the second route is that it means I'm not going dual extruder, with a cyclops..... which I had planned on....
I went the duet wifi route and ir leveling myself, it was the best upgrade. Worth it if you can spare the $$$.
Rostock Max V2, Duet Wifi, IR Probe, PanelDue 7" LCD, Heated Enclosure, Firestop cans, Thermally Fused 12v E3D V6, Berd Air, Floating Thermally fused 24v Bed, Aluminum heat spreader, PEI, Dual 12v PSUs in series.
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