I’m curious… due to a recent project I’ve decided to take up, I’m interested in finding out the real feasibility of powering a K40 on a 12v system. Is there a power supply that supports this in any fashion? Or is there any general solution anyone has found that proves this is doable? I’d be open to installing a secondary power supply for this that I can switch back and forth from if I wanted to use the same machine on a standard 110 connection. I’m just sincerely curious if this is a plausible thing (and if someone has actually accomplished this).
Do you mean run an Inverter off of 12VDC(battery?) to run the K40? I guess the first thing you want to do is profile the power needs of the K40 into Watts and then convert that to amps at 12V then amp-hours and you’ll have the battery needs per hour.
If you mean running everything from 12V(LPS, control/motors) then it is unlikely you’ll find a LPS that’ll run from 12VDC and it’s likely you’ll miss steps running the stepper motors on 12V instead of 24V and might burn up some wires/connectors as it tries to pull 2x the current.
Go with a pure sinewave inverter or better yet a small inverter based generator like the Honda EU2000i.
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Ok, valid point. But what if I add something like this to the equation?!
Screenshot_20210812-101902_DuckDuckGo|281x500
My core question would initially be, would anything special need to be setup for the power supply, or could I use the same power supply that’s already in the unit? Not necessarily including this as “something special” per se… I’m basically asking if I need to have a separate power supply if I wanted to swap between a 24v (stepped up) source and a standard 110v source.
I apologize in advance for not having enough time to really wrap my head around the electrical side of things up to this point. But I’d rather at least ask others with more knowledge than myself vs diving in head first and screwing something up.
It would help to know what your goal is in wanting to run off of 12v? You running off a car battery in remote locations or what?
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What @TwelveFoot said!
But what if I add something like this to the equation?!
Screenshot_20210812-101902_DuckDuckGo|281x500
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That converts 12V to 24V and that would power the controller and motors.
You still need a Laser Power Supply which runs on AC lines voltage. To convert the LPS to DC input is a big deal.
What is wrong with @dougl suggestion to run the entire K40 off a 12V to AC inverter?
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Basically looking to be able to run it remotely off a solar charged battery bank and don’t want to waste energy in the inverter conversion. Also, building had a power outage recently after a really bad storm that left me without power for almost half a week. REALLY made getting things I needed to take care of difficult. So its technically a backup plan that has other opportunities involved.
You’ll need an inverter for the LPS anyway, and you’ll put the same stepper current so higher losses if you drive them with 12V. A boost converter 12V→24V should lose less than going through the inverter and would be inexpensive, I think.
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