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Potential heater bed Problems

Posted by Awesome__Guy 
Potential heater bed Problems
November 26, 2015 01:31PM
I bought this heater bed and it claims to be a 24V bed but i have this power supply 20A 240W

My question is will everything run fine? If i did the math right this bed draws 380W and my power supply is no where close to that. I do have and old PC power supply lying around I just wasnt sure on it reliability that's why I didnt want to use it for the electronics.

Could the bed run on 12V only and just take longer to heat up? Would it be better to try rig the bed to its own power supply? (is that even possible)

Thanks in advance for the help
Re: Potential heater bed Problems
November 26, 2015 04:33PM
Yes it's possible but it will take a lot more time and the maximum temperature may not reach 110 degrees, it maynot even reach 85 drgrees if the resistance turns out unfavorable: 1.4 + 0.3 = 1.7 ohm.

Powering a bed of 1.4 ohm at 24V, the current is I = U/R = 24/1.4 = 17.14 amps. You'll need at least a 20A psu to drive it without pwm like this one:
24V 20A
You can't power it directly from a controller board which are often limited by 11A max. You'll need a solid state relay with a good cooling body, maybe actively cooled with a fan. I don't have any experience with SSRs but I'd overdimension it at least 1.5 times, so get an SSR that can handle 30A at 24V. Also make sure the SSR can be switched at frequencies of 10 hz or higher, if you plan on using PID. Some relays get very hot when rapidly switching, bang-bang would then be recommended.

But I prefer to work with mosfets and just choose one with a sufficiently low Rdson value so it doesn't get hot. I've made a custom pcb for the second hot end I use on the prusa i3 I own and works perfectly. I just copied the mosfet circuit from the ramps 1.4 design and fed a separate 12V into the hot end. I used pin 45 IIRC from an aux connector. This way I can use 2x40W heater cartridges instead of 2x 25W. They would've been powered from the 5A connector but feared the motors wouldn't get enough power or tripping the 5A polyfuse.

I've powered the 12V mk2a 200x200mm heated bed using a 24V psu with pwm set in firmware to 128, which is at 50% power.

A mains poweted heater is also an option, especially at that size. There are ssrs that can switch ac with phase detection to reduce spikes on the mains net. Good electrical insulation and protection is then critical.


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Kind regards
Imqqmi

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