I worked out exactly how much electricity 3D Printers use, whether you should care, can you save?
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- Опубликовано: 23 авг 2024
- Do you like charts? I like charts.
How many charts is enough? Who knows. Maybe 11?
***About the bed insulation on the artillery! I get it, I hear you, it's insulated. I know, it's obvious when you think about it..yes of course it will save some power.
Anyway I suspect this isn't the whole story, not least according to a video by Teaching Tech here:
• Speed up 3D prints & s...
According to his methodology that was similar to mine (same monitors even!) this would account for around 10% of the energy saving - not accounting for the nearly double bed surface area. The bulk of the energy saving between bed types potentially is still unaccounted for and remains open to speculation, I guess..
Obviously this needs further work, so I've penciled it in for a future episode on enclosures, insulation and ambient temperature. *****
Ambient temp for all experiments was 20C.
In this video, I am hopefully answering any and all possible questions about 3d printer power usage and energy consumption. How much does it cost to run? Can you save energy? Does bed temperature make a difference? Find out.
*** Please consider supporting the channel to allow me to do more, and better stuff! ***
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I came to the same conclusion, the energy cost is almost negligible but if you are still concerned about it then adding some insulation to the bed is about the best thing you can do.
It's just good in general to insulate it. Faster heating, more sustained and more uniform. All the benefits, zero downsides I'd say :D
@@DARKredDOLLAR increased weight if you have a bed slinger
Hardly a second wasted in this video. Thank you for keeping it so tight and succinct.
Appreciate the feedback 👍
Great video! The Artillery is also the only printer you tested with bed insulation, no? Heated beds with insulation are more efficient than those without, a la the Ender 3 S1 (without) Ender 3 S1 Pro (with). The Pro uses ~20% less power than the standard using the same gcode as tested by Aurora Tech.
interesting...I also didn't know they'd added insulation on the S1 pro. I have neither :)
I second the motion to have 3D printer manufacturers rate their machines' efficiency in benchies/kWh.
Also, I would be interested in some empirical data on how much of an effect enclosures have. I can assume that they would probably cut the power consumption of all printers, but in particular I can see the most gains in printers with the smallest enclosed volume (logically); I would, again, assume that in particular the "power saved by an enclosure" divided by "net print volume" would be the lowest for delta printers. Might be an interesting addendum to this video, though I understand that even just the cost buying acrylic sheets to build simple enclosures for all printers would probably outweigh the simple satisfaction of curiosity.
Either way, very interesting, in particular seeing that AC versus DC bed heaters have such a marked influence on power consumption.
I got to wondering if manufacturers will start to take power consumption seriously now that costs have increased, a printer that is more efficient could be that one benefit that decides a sale, especially in the UK where energy costs an arm and a leg!
@@AndrewAHayes Just wanted to say a big no to mains powered beds to help efficiency, eathing can be iffy on these & the moving bed doesn't help wire life & contact back to the main chassis. Get a higher efficiency low voltage power supply. A bit of lightweight insulation will give a greater saving for any heated bed. Just make sure there is a thermal fuse...
@@chrisharvie-smith486 I did not mention mains powered beds, but I do have them on my Ender 5 Plus and my Pro 3D V-King 400 both only move in the Z axis and have adequate earthing and strain relief.
Also I bought my Ender 5 Plus machines from Technology Outlet in the UK, anything electrical if sold in the UK has to meet our very stringent electrical safety certification
earlier this week i spent $300 on filament. im sure ill run out of filament again before my printer uses close to that much electricity. :) great video, great information, keep recording and ill keep watching :)
An important note is the artillery bed has insulation on the bottom which is probably a big reason why it used less energy.
yes a few people have mentioned this...I will have to arrange to test insulated vs not insulated to see how much of it is that.
@@LostInTech3D Just anecdotally, I insulated my Ender 3 bed to increase the maximum bed temp. Max temperature before insulation was 110-115°C . After insulation 135-140°C. And that's in open-air, no enclosure, using 24v DC power supply. Used pipe insulation foam + aluminum tape.
Congratulations on producing legitimately good enough videos to master the algorithm. You've made it lol. I'm interested in how much energy use can be improved by adding insulation to the bottom of the bed. I just ordered some areo gel tape and am going to try it out myself, but I probably won't have time to get nitty gritty with the data so it would be an interesting video if you had the time.
It seems like a few people would like this so it's on the list 👍
This is the best printer energy usage information I've seen! Benchies/kWh is a great unit. Like others, I would be really interested in seeing how insulation affects the bed power consumption.
If you are planning on a DIY AC conversation as mentioned in the video make sure it's done safely.
Not a guide just a note to help prevent issues.
Thermal fuse is a must (125C trip point is a good choice for standard bed temps)
Ensure the fuse is rated for at least 20% more than the max expected current of the bed (it should only fail for thermal trigger it should not be used as a current fuse in addition)
Brand name/high quality SSR (these can fail open which is the reason for the thermal fuse)
Solid crimped ground connection for frame and bed - especially important for the bed.
If you aren't going to do or don't feel comfortable doing all these points please for your own safety do not attempt such a conversion.
You really are my kind of nerd, and I say that with much love! Great videos.
Thank you! 👍
Very interesting. I wonder how much (if any) energy is saved by simply putting a cardboard box over a printer to trap that head bed heat. I do this out of necessity because my basement goes down to 15C in winter, and it gets up to around 45C in there.
I enjoyed this video and the quality of production. I think it would be interesting to see how much energy is saved by enclosures. Another downside to higher energy consumption is that the home's AC has to run longer to compensate for the heat.
Would love to see the benchies per kWh increase with either insulated bed or an enclosure.
Very good video, I was concerned about increased electricity usage when I first got into 3D printing but quickly realised they don't use a great deal of power.
After watching this I feel like I had calculated it incorrectly, or rather at a "worst case" usage scenario and I feel even better about longer prints than before.
Thank you, LIT
A future episode on insulation, enclosures and stuff is penciled in :)
I like the PSUControl plug-ins in OctoPrint. I can plug the printers into a smart plug and set it up so that I can turn them on via the OctoPrint UI, and after a print completes it will automatically get turned off after the printer has been idle for a configurable amount of time and the nozzle has gone below a certain temperature. Makes me comfortable running a print that will finish around 1-2 AM knowing it will shut itself off and not sit there idling (the Ender 3 Pro specifically) using electricity for no reason. Of course, that means the pi is always plugged in and running, but I’m assuming it’s power usage is much smaller.
Is the sidewinder also the only one with an insulated bed? That could explain the added efficiency. Mains power itself should only be a small difference, because switching power supplies are almost always 80-95% efficient under load.
I've put something in the description about the bed :)
Yeah, the Meanwell 350W PSU I am using, for example, is 87% efficient. So using a 24V bed is only going to use 15-20% more power. That said, mains power bed is great if done safely: heats up faster, and reduces the cost and size of the PSU required.
@@jaro6985 I would trade the added risk of a mains powered bed on a machine I tinker with regularly for a couple minutes of warm up time.
Additionally, having an ender 3 pro with the meanwell psu, it makes me feel a lot more comfortable that all the questionable 3D printer stuff is connected to a known quality psu. So I can trust the psu to have the proper safety mechanisms in case something goes wrong.
@@TheAnoniemo Yeah that's totally fair choice. Most users would be better off with a 24V or maybe even 48V bed, if such things exist.
Watch this multiple times, you started a thinking process. Great content
I suspect the reason for the delta’s odd power consumption is the kinematics. For a Cartesian to move from X:0, Y0 to X0, Y100 it only needs to move a single motor. In order to perform the same movement with a delta you need to move all three motors at once. Considering that at least some parts of a a model will consist of straight lines you may be getting the discrepancies from there. As for testing this hypothesis… I don’t know. Maybe print some cylinders with no infill? Just walls. This way you force the Cartesian printer to run XY axes simultaneously? Maybe vase mode so you run all axes at once? Worth a thought.
A delta printer uses all 3 motors for every move in a layer. A cartesian printer uses 2.
True!
Should give this man a corexy
Considering I've been tasked at work to print some parts for work (good for me, no need to wake up early and take that disgusting horrible bus!), that video came out in a timing so convenient it's downright frightening.
Thanks for the data! I was gonna try to calculate it myself but if you permit, I'll just take a sensible value from your data and add a bit from conversion losses (I actually have a step-up converter to bring the DC bed from 220w to 400w).
Love the benchies/kWh units! Funny enough, I've been printing for over 3 years, and never printed one. It's almost a rite of passage that I've ignored. I've got my printer on a smart plug, that measures energy usage, though I haven't looked at it much. I'm building a Voron 2.4 350mm, so I'll have to see what it uses, and maybe finally get around to printing a benchie...
I didn't print any either, until I started making vids, then it's kind of obligatory 👍 Good luck with the voron!
Adding two data points from my end: my Ender 3 Pro printing at 230C/50C (PLA+) draws about 80 watts. That's a little higher than your 60 watt reading, but eh. My Ender 5 Plus printing at 260C/70C (nylon) draws about 250 watts. Both were tested months ago, using a Kill-a-Watt on 20+ hour prints, just because I was curious.
230C would be the reason I guess? What on earth is going on with the ender 5 though?!
@@LostInTech3D I suspect one of them got insulation underneath (plus the 3 has the bed way lower, less air to circulate under it) while the other doesn't. The +10°c bed, +30°c nozzle shouldn't mean THAT much indeed.
@@LostInTech3D big print bed at high temps is my guess
@@LostInTech3D It's the 5 Plus. It's got a massive bed, constantly dumping out heat into the room. You could hold your hand out way up above the printer and feel it emanating.
I did later build a little "greenhouse" cover for it - a PVC pipe cube and plastic wrap on 5 faces. I haven't measured the power usage since then, but it definitely does get toasty underneath, which would suggest the heated bed wouldn't need to work so hard.
Congrats on 12k!
Thanks, these are the charts I was looking for, but according to your chart at 2:40 the X2 is using a lot of energy, so the total consumption must be so low because of this insolation-layer under the bed. I'm getting a Bambu Lab X1 hopefully soon and they provide their printers not with the now typical PEI-sheet (available as an option), but a hot-/cold-sheet. The cold plate side is for PLA and PETG, needs a gluestick, but default is just 35° C, so almost nothing in summer. That's probably the next trend with those crazy energy-prices in most of Europe. And there is a 2nd good reason to print with low-temperature print-beds: almost no shrinking of the parts after cooling, which usually is between 0,3-0,6% for PETG. I already had a couple of miss-prints because of this shrinking with parts that needed to fit perfectly.
You are correct about the insulation, and a lot more printers now come with insulation!
I know my Prusa eventually stops making noise, I have not monitored it close enough to know when though. I think when the hot end gets below like 50c the fan for it shuts off and the print fan just shuts off at end of job. I think the PSU also has a fan but it also shuts off when there is no real power demand.
I am pretty sure my 3090FE consumes way more power when I am gaming and for it all the heat is just a waste product that gets dumped into the room by the radiator on the water loop.
I have a SR and I love it. BUT it has some flaws like the firmware and the extruder so you can't even imagine how much I look forward to that video!
No hints? 😉
@@LostInTech3D OK, here are a few things:
* the extruder is a really poor bmg clone
** that likes to not be able to keep up with the required flow so it starts to click and misses steps when you print too fast (keep in mind that speed is the outstanding feature of that machine)
** inserting the filament is PITA - I have to remove the idler screw and open the extruder basically evertime.
** sometimes you can't remove the filament without unplugging the bowden tube because after it was molten it doesn't fit back through the extruder anymore
* firmware
** I didn't test it yet but I've seen reports that it doesn't work with octoprint
** the firmware doesn't have thermal runaway protection enabled on the hotbed (the current firmware fixes that but WTF do you even disable that? It's enabled by default in Marlin so they have deliberately disabled that safety feature)
* speaking of safety: the case was not earthed/grounded (not a native speaker I hope you know what I mean) if you take a multimeter and connect it with the long pin on the UK plug and the case you see it's not connected. I always test that on new printers - this one was the first one where I saw that problem. I made a connection from the yellow/green cable to the case myself
* the hotend is a weird volcano clone with a heater block that's too small for some reason. The nozzle doesn't fully fit into the heatblock. While it still works it looks stupid and it bothers me even though you don't see it as it's covered by the silicone sock.
All that ranting aside I still really love that printer the things I mentioned above are just so unnecessary and could be easily fixed/avoided some of my points wouldn't even cost more to make it right from the beginning. In my opinion it's really sad that they built such a great machine and did those stupid mistakes.
Gotcha. I'm not suffering from all of these, like the loading is actually ok for me, or the extruder (I agree..not a fan of these) but some I will check up on, thanks for the heads up. 👍
I think the SR power draw while printing is just a result of printing faster. Printing faster means more heat is removed by the filament leaving the hotend. As a result the hotend heater has to compensate to stay within your temperature target and it puts more heat into the hotend.
Could be!
I think the faster prints = less power bit has a limit. Taking the hotend as an example, it takes a given amount of energy to raise the plastic temperature to the point of being molten and a certain amount of plastic has to be made molten and extruded to form the benchy, so that value would be your theoretical minimum power draw in an ideal, 100% efficiency system. Then from there all variance comes down to inefficiencies in getting that power to the plastic. You can apply this logic to all the other parts of the print like fans, the bed, steppers.
Yes - there is a theoretical maximum. Definitely.
for the Idle consumption the easiest option is probably to plug the printer in a smart plug and let octoprint turn it off when it is cooled down. cheap plugs like the ikea ones are
I keep meaning to set this up - of course you have to also turn off the pi too, annoyingly, unless you have one of the fancy cables that cuts the power between pi and printer!
This reminds me of the "high voltage" on/off options in Marlin, so you can have your printer turn on the 12/24v (or whatever you use) separate from the controller's power. That would probably significantly reduce this usage, since it would turn off any 12/24v fans and also the PSU's own idle current.
Of course you would need hardware that can do this, like a separate 5v standby supply and something to control the main PSU.
@@LostInTech3D yeah, currently i just have the PI idling (which takes less power than the printer and is silent) but i cant just cut power to the pi since it doesn't start properly if you don't shut it down.
I would have to somehow shut off a smart plug with the pi's psu with a delay to let it shut down or find a comfortable way to boot the pi without power cycling it.
That's how I have mine set up.
Octoprint plus a TP-Link Kasa Power Bar and the related plugin.
Shuts the printer off after it cools down, then a controlled shutdown of the Raspberry Pi Zero 2W.
I'm really not regretting to have started my 3D Printing Hobby with more... Uhm... Quality 3D Printers like a Formlabs Form² SLA and a Prusa i3 MK3S FDM 3D Printer... How the hell do you pass a 3D Printer over into production where their fans keep _constantly_ running despite the 3D Printer doing nothing? How the hell does that work? 🤔
I mean I've long been on the fence for Chinese products rarely ever progressing a Tech ( except for the plethora of boards to choose from nothing else came to mind about 3D Printing ) - Often enough being dangerous ( thinking of lethal because ungrounded 220V appliances like K40 Laser Cutters ) - And usually just being there to flood a market but really? It takes so little these days to make something halfway decent and they still mess up the basics enough for them to be a nuisance to their customers 😑
And boy was I _already_ annoyed from the mileage I had gotten from constantly running back and forth between my PC and i3 MK3S situated at opposite end of my flat to load new files onto its SD Card before first replacing that Card with a WiFi enabled Model and later on Octoprint. Any BS like a constantly running Fan _or_ the necessity to turn it ON/OFF to just prevent a simple Fan from running would have driven me nuts - I blame my network enabled Form² ( and now Form³ ) for jading me in that regard 🤣
They definitely use enough power to notice it on your electric bill.
And I live in a part of the US where electricity is the lowest price, so I could only Imagine some other places seeing $50+ a month on 24+ hours of printing
Insulation! There was insulation on the bottom of the mains powered bed!
Indeed there is - I will be covering that in a future vid, I suspect it doesnt matter as much as most commenters think (see teaching tech's vid on it)
@@LostInTech3D Sounds good, I'll be waiting for that one. Thanks for all the great content btw!
100W heater at 240V takes less than 0.5A, but at 24V it takes more than 4A. Losses in wiring are a function of the square of the current, so a 24V bed has more than 64x the loss in the wiring. This is compensated a bit by having thicker wires with less resistance, but still will be significant. Add to that the loss for converting from 240V AC to 24V DC and it's obvious that an AC heater is way better. That also goes for dehydrators by the way.
yep i^2.R 👍
In the future id like to see an additional option put into slicing software that shows total costs. You enter the cost of the filament and cost per MWH and it gives you a complete breakdown. I was actually concerned about power usage. I was looking into items to resell, and I kept approximating 10h prints to £2.50 for energy usage. I knew I was overestimated but I didn't realize by how much. In the middle of printing a Paris Lamp (Google it, it's pretty cool" for myself with speedy settings and it's coming in at approx 65 hours. Without speedy settings its probably closer to 180h.
I was bricking the energy costs, so thank you for the info. Your effort is appreciated.
Why don't 3D printers have an option to turn off completely after the print is finished? I'm using jyers leveling firmware. So someone went to the effort to provide the community with this free leveling tool and didn't think to put in this functionality. It boggles the mind. Not that I mind, they have done a great service, but it just seems unusual that no one has come up with this yet.
You can get them to turn off at the end via octoprint/smart plugs. Also, some of the newer models go to very low power mode, like 1-3W. But...yeah it's not huge progress there.
When printing PLA I only have the bed heat on for the first two layers now the energy prices in the UK have gone up to ridiclous rates!
+ 1 new subscriber
Much appreciated!
If you put it down to 40c you spend very little more, it's almost nothing, but the extra heat is like insurance against the print coming off.
(I think)
@@LostInTech3D keeping the bed at 40c is a good thing for borosilicate glass beds so it holds on to the bed but if you print on plain glass or mirror as I do you can print PLA with no heat at all, I just feel more comfortable having the heat on for the first couple of layers
Ah - if it's plain glass then it's a different barrel of worms! :)
Excellent video again and great timing as the boss at home asked me what the power consumption the my "steve" actually was. Now I have an answer and it's (thankfully) a good answer as well :-).
Is the Sidewinder also the only one with bed insulation? I never seen it before, but than again it's hardly worth mentioning during unpacking or first impression video's. I am certainly going to look into insulating my heated glas bed I think that could be really worth it. Keep up the great work.
Yes...I never clocked it either but it's been pointed out...a few times 😂
I'm going to have to test that too now.
I live in the UK and pay 42p per KwH. The heated bed on my Aquila is a killer for my electricity bill
Thumbs up cuz you named a printer Steve. Also 0.40c/kwh is sticker shock compared to murica north east at avg 0.11c/kwh
trust me - its a shock here too, last year I was paying 0.15 day and 0.05 night !!
This suggests that insulating your bed and/or putting your printer in some sort of case to cut the losses from the bed would be the best way to cut power costs easily.
it does doesn't it. Further tests needed.
@@LostInTech3D Sounds like a potential follow-up video 🤔. I’m in the process of printing out the parts for a Lack enclosure to keep losses down and improve my prints, and I’m going to be doing some before and after power usage measurements, and I would be interested in what you find out if you decide to continue. My printer is in my garage, so I’m sure in winter it pulls a lot more power than usual trying to keep the bed warm, especially as I have trouble printing anything near the edges of my bed in winter.
In a review of the new Ender 3 S1 Pro, it was noted that the bed is insulated and it did reduce power consumption compared to the regular S1.
Just to reenforce your finding, Last year I did some experiments with both a CR6 SE and a Sidewinder X1. The SWX1 used significantly less power. I agree that the bed is the key to efficiency.
Nice analysis :) .
Since mine are solar powered, and I am not on the power grid, the electrical running cost is very close to zero :) .
The bed in the picture was insulated I can’t imagine that the others are. Also the bed on a delta is round and much smaller
I print quite a bit with my upgraded voxelab aquilla, and ive used 49 kw's in just over a 6 weeks, thats about £10 in 6 weeks
Great video! A small suggestion: avoid 3d chart as they make it difficult to judge relative size of difference columns.
Would isolating the bed from the undersida lower energy consumption ?
The PSU for the bead heater should not use much more than 10-20%, other vice it would get really very hot.
Its probobly the combination that is the main reason... but it really should not be that hard to messure
I don’t use a heated bed for pla or petg, I was a bit concerned about the power the bed used
If you would like to have as accurate data as possible, you would need to measure energy consumption during heat up and then during printing. For each filament type. And that could be done on a short standardised print that takes around 10 minutes.
I had exactly this question, for the same reason. 38p per kWh for most of the day here. 😭 It'll start to add up quickly.
ah but stuck insulator foam (that is meant for car) under my ender 3's bed. assuming it would reduce the energy needed to keep the bed warm.
As 3D printers become more and more of an "off the shelf" appliance for the average Joe, I hope at least "Benchy/kwh" becomes a standard measure of efficiency.😂
The ender 3 s1 pro has Insulated bed the young lady at auroratech has a review demonstrating the real savings in power. Interesting but no big deal really. I guess.
Thanks for your work ;)
You are more than welcome 😉
2:40 Are "Hotend Net Power" and "Bed Net Power" taken when the they are near room temperature, or operating temperature? I noticed printers use the most power when cold, because:
1) Electrical resistance increases with temperature (reducing current, and therefore power). P = I*V = I^2*R = V^2/R
2) There might be a PID control system that reduces power when approaching the target temperature.
Room, because yes, nearly all printers use pid for hotends, although beds sometimes use other power schemes.
We need a DIY nuclear Reactor, it would be great no power problems for decades to come!
I uh....I'll let you test that one out :)
The problem is that every time someone tries to start such a grassroots nuclear project the government gets jealous and intervenes.
@@MetalheadAndNerd not this time, I'm reading a book off a boyscout and it seems alibaba has lots off the parts I need. Hope you don't love close tho
Great video
Thanks!
Charts are good 🙂. Be interesting to know how much ambient temperature would affect those heated bed power figures.
Good idea. I think if this is popular enough, another episode with ambient temperatures and enclosures will be on the cards 👍
@@LostInTech3D I'm also wondering if those foam-from-the-box insulation DIYs have much effect. (People use the 3d printer boxes black foam packaging to insulate their beds)
I am actually hoarding that stuff..... ;)
I would like to see a power difference with a cover.
Future video 👍😉
@@LostInTech3D thank you!
Fantastic work
Sooo i guess speed run a benchy in fact reducing the power consumed lol
literally....speed run everything as much as possible! Saves energy too now, as well as time, what's not to like! 👍
How is a mains powered bed controlled? DC relay (typical on/off “bang bang”)?
Seems odd to me that such a simple solution to bed heating wouldn’t come with drawbacks like temp swings for simplified controls.
Definitely not "bang bang" style control as I could see the energy meter settling on a voltage rather than on/off, I will have to look closer at the pics I took in the review of the printer...but I have a feeling it would be an optoelectric relay thingy that's doing PWM.
If it's in the winter and you need the heat on anyway, cost is basically null
Absolutely correct 👍
Lot of data👏
I always have bed at 50°C on my Ender 3 V2.
the artillery has an insulating pad under the bed. my ender 3 and ender 3v2 don't. Don't know about other printers. perhaps this contributes?
Yep it will, see description 👍
Interesting.
did that most efficient bed have insulated bed? The others dint?
You know what....you might be onto something!
@@LostInTech3D of course i am
@@LostInTech3D It's easier to keep a bed warm when you have a comforter/blanket =)
I wouldn't jump to any conclusions yet. It's just another variable I didn't consider. If I ever get both types in the same format to be able to test...it will be interesting to see how much it matters.
@@LostInTech3D you can just get a insulator pad for like the ender and try.
Liked and subscribed! :)
None of my printers sit with the fans running when idle. Are you sure you have them configured correctly?
Yep - I'm talking about the motherboard, hotend and psu fans. Not the part cooling fan.
0:11 this feels illegal
Who leaves their printer on idling 24/7? Only time mine is on idling is when an overnight print finishes a couple hours before I wake up.
It's the octoprint thing, is why people do it.
@@LostInTech3D Didn't know people did that, but I agree that's a massive waste if the fans stay on and wear needlessly. If it's just the board itself it shouldn't be that bad.
Benchy/kwh🤣 I hear the ancient civilisation of Atlantis may have used it as a measure of energy consumption 😜
AC wins agains , suck on that Edison
Although you talk about 3D printers, you shouldn't use 3D bar plots. No one should use 3D bar plots.
I don't agree with using mains powered beds, especially on bed slingers. The movement will easily cause damage to the wiring resulting in a electrocution hazard.
Think I'll work Benchies per hour into the rest of my life now.
It's an SI unit if I say it is.
@@LostInTech3D I think my car burns about 400 Benchies per hour...