PSU Insufficient for 30watt e3d v6 upgrade?

[bLiTzJoN]

Recently purchased an e3d v6 which arrived with a 30watt element. Tuning, it only reaches 120 max in 10 min so it fails. The stock never had those issues, rather it failed initially by exceeding the temp too quickly. Coincidentally, I purchased the v6/volcano pack directly from e3d which came with two elements, so I installed the 2nd element just to verify it wasn't faulty.... same issue. Now I'm troubleshooting. I set the EXT0_PID_INTEGRAL_DRIVE_MAX to various levels all the way to 255 and it doesn't seem to make a noticeable difference. I'm not finding a lot out there and most people with power supply issues use ATX supply, unlike mine. Looking for some guidance on what my next steps should be or just consider replacing/upgrading the supply?

[IMBoring25]

Have you changed the thermistor settings in the firmware? Have you done a PID tune? Does your host program offer a graph showing hot end PWM history?

[Polygonhell]

What's the resistance of the heater cartridge? It should be a little less that 5Ohms.

They come in 12 and 24V flavors and if you have a 24V one on a 12V supply you'll have issues. I know of at least one reputable manufacturer, who was provided 24V heater cartridges by there Chinese supplier and didn't realize until they got into customer hands (they look identical, the 24V one will have a much higher resistance closer to 20 Ohms).

What's the voltage at the input to the RAMBO when you are heating the hotend? as long as it's close to 12V it's not the PSU.

FWIW I very much doubt it's the PSU, there just isn't that much current draw from a hotend, and the stock setup is closer to 40Watts.

[bLiTzJoN]

Side of the barrel on the element is 12V. I'm reading about 7 ohms which I happen to notice is the same reading on the stock hot end so this makes no sense. The EXT0_TEMPSENSOR_TYPE was set to 8. Thermistor is 70.8kohms @ 28C. For giggles, I manually set the temp to 200 and after about 20 minutes it seems to plateau around 144. PSU is reading 12V output. I did get a 2nd thermistor with the Volcano, I may swap it and see what happens.

[bLiTzJoN]

Ok, looking at the Configuration.h file the following was present

Code: Select all

// maximum time the heater is can be switched on. Max = 255.  Overridden if EEPROM activated.
#define EXT0_PID_MAX 295

WTF?! Did I fat finger something when I reflashed after the install? Noooo clue. I'm assuming that maps to the display in MatterControl as Extr. 1 PID max value [0-255] which displayed 39. I changed the value in MatterControl to 255 and voila! I have power!!

[Eaglezsoar]

So it sounds like it is fixed? Good job in troubleshooting!