12 V or 24 V?
While looking around for parts to build my own printer I noticed that e3d has two different heater cartridges for the different voltages. They say that the performance of both is equal, so I wonder how it would affect the rest of the printer?
Does it have advantages to use the higher voltage for the steppers or heated bed (which is probably going to be mains anyway)?
I have all 12v printers but if I had the option I would for sure go 24v. Much more efficient as far as I am told and you can run lower current setups/get faster heat times.
Someone also mentioned that the steppers will run quieter at 24 V. Can someone confirm that?
If you’re driving the bed directly from the mains, it doesn’t matter all that much if you go for 12 or 24V. Stepper drivers will tend to run more smoothly on 24V and the heater will put less load (ampere) on the control board, but in turn 24V PSUs tend to be slightly more expensive.
24v is safer because you have less current flowing through thinner, more flexible wires. (Moving heated beds are particularly bad on 12v.) It also lets you run the motors much faster before losing torque. Whether the motors will run smoother/quieter depends on the motor specs and driver chip. For example, 8825s tend to be noisy and put ripples into the print with 24v systems.
@Ashley_Webster The 8825’s blanking time (minimum on time) is too long, so the coil current overshoots the target before the chopper can turn back off during low-current microsteps. That’s in the standard mixed decay mode. You can switch them to fast decay mode and the ripples will go away, but then they tend to make hissing noises.
I made a simulator for this sort of stepper driver behavior to let you predict when you’ll get ripples in the print based on drivetrain specs: https://github.com/rcarlyle/StepperSim
Here’s a big post where I explain this sort of driver issue in detail: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/3dp-ideas/qqTGMIFCKpU/wRWcZYR9G1cJ