Hi,
I realise there are a fair few posts about these issues, but I wanted to see what others think about my case, and if it warrants something like getting a new PSU.
I started getting consistent print failures here, which usually almost never happen. After sitting in on a print, I got lucky and saw the failure as it happened.
There was an undervoltage event logged to the console. One of the motors didn't move properly, juddered around a bit, and the hotend lost its reference, crashing into the print a very short time later.
This is a SeeMeCNC RostockMAX 3.2 (Delta) here. Had it since 2018, always worked fine. Only mod of note is a PEI print surface. The printer lives in a closed cupboard of its own, so temperatures are pretty stable. I pretty much always run the bed at 90°C, hotend at 215°C (for ABS).
So I started monitoring it as it prints now to see how these undervolt events are happening. I noticed that Vin was sat around 12.3v when idle. Checked it with a multimeter. It agrees with the onboard Vin sensor.
Now, during printing, I'm seeing that the voltage does vary a potentially significant amount, especially in response to the bed heating. When the bed comes on, Vin drops a full volt, to around 11.3 or so.
So just now I tweaked the voltage trim pot on the PSU, to give it an extra half volt, thinking maybe it's just oscillating too close to the threshold... We'll see how that goes I guess... print is underway.
As it's printing, with the hotend and bed holding temperature, I'm seeing a regular oscillation between 12.8 and 11.6 or thereabouts. Hopefully the extra half volt is just enough juice to keep it from spazzing out.
But this is still a bit disconcerting... I've never had these issues before, and I'm thinking that maybe the PSU output should not be varying so much... So I wanted to get opinions... Do you think the PSU is on its way out?
Will follow up as the print continues. Maybe I can run it a bit higher for a little longer as I look at a replacement PSU... or idk, we'll see.
In any case, thanks in advance for any feedback!
Cheers