Clean power for your 3D printer is a must-have item if you don’t want mystery problems cropping up. In todays segment on 3D printer repair I’m re-wiring this one of my printers and replacing the sketchy no-name power supply with a (better) quality Mean Well unit.
There’s no part of a 3D printer that touches everything it does like the power supply. Each other powered component’s driven off it. So if your PSU is suspect or poorly wired you’ll quickly run into problems.
I’m replacing a 12 volt power supply with a similar Mean Well (eventually, it’s initially a place-holder unit) part. If you’d like a more exhaustive list of power supply options the folks at RepRap.org have you covered.
Our rebuild-in-progress Tronxy has a poorly wired, suspiciously unbranded power supply. There are artifacts showing up on some of the prints and the motors appear to be cutting out occasionally. Both of which point to the power supply.
And if that wasn’t enough it sounds like a hovercraft a few seconds after powering up. My guess is that the bearings or bushings in the fan motor on the power supply have already started to fail after a few hours of use. Which is generally a sign of failures to come.
Also adding to the trouble some of the wires in the screw down terminals were sitting in the their openings without having been screwed down. Others were soldered on the end. Which makes it tough to achieve an initial lock on the wire and will cause issues as the setup ages.
So I’ve taken a look at each of the issues involved and cleaned them up. With the 3D printer’s power supply replaced it appears to be printing cleanly with no missed layers or skipping.
Due to a heat issue after replacing the power supply I ended up cutting a 120mm fan in the cases bottom. While I’m fairly sure it wasn’t the power supply overheating, but the board, providing more cooling all-around solved the problem.