So I was reading through the Ramps 24V reprap wiki and I was wondering if the following steps are the right ones to change my MPCNC to 24 V. Notice that i dont intend to use a heated bed or an Extruder with 12v Fans.
Why?
Because I need my current 12V Powersupply for my 3D Printer and i have a additional 24V powersupply laying around.
I hope to get some extra torque from my nema 17…not that i need it, its just nice to have.
Pretty cool I have always wanted to try it. I keep an eye out when I go to electronics surplus stores in San Jose but have never come across a 24V power supply.
Let us know how it goes after you have used it a while, and if you think it has much of a difference. The mini Rambo is ready to go for 24V so Maybe I will try to get on on amazon and try it myself.
I went ahead and just did it… It didnt cause any problems everything works so far. I am not sure if my steppers are stronger… It hard to feel it wthout measuring.
Again if you do it my way… Dont connect a heatbed. If you want to you have to vhange the 11A F2 Fuse. If youn want to run a extruder and fans you need a 24 heater cartridge and 24v fans.
I was just looking if anyone had done this. From what I have been told, voltage increases speed, but also torque at speed. Where current is more about holding torque. So I plan and trying my 24v power supply with my Lowrider and see how that goes to increase ability to cut faster. A lot of steppers have lots of torque for holding and very little when moving. Higher voltage helps the steppers. That’s why CNC machines are often 60v. Rambo can handle 28v I think so I’ll try the 24. I have a spare for my 3d printer which is a 24v printer.
Has mostly to do with RPM, not power. 24v does help a bit, not much ,you can look up stepper torque curves.
We can run up to 120mm/s as is but typically do 10mm/s I highly doubt you will notice anything. Before you spend money if you bought from me you can just increase the drivers as I under volt them, and over sell for the machine, I don’t see the need for any more speed or power.
However, I just enjoy the process of learning via experimentation, not just from reading. I have a 24v power supply already sitting on the shelf wired up so no cost and 5 minutes to switch over and test. I’m so far very impressed with my Lowrider v2 recently completed, but I just need to tinker for the fun of it.
24V is no doubt better, but I would not say huge, many actual datasheets out there showing 12, 24, 48 volt curves. Again, I see no need to change anything. If a step is ever skipped something else is wrong and it is better to fix that than add more power.
As an example, last night my filament got caught on the spool holder, my printer pulled itself across the shelf, knocked everything off, pulled itself up off the table. So this morning I loosened the tension screw. I want to chose where it fails, and for a printer it should not be able to do that.Heck two days ago one of the little ones running around here messed with my Zen and it missed it’s endstop, being a core XY it hit the stop blocks and literally started to fold itself up, so I lowered the driver current on it so if it ever happens again it skips steps instead of breaking itself.
I build for its purpose, aluminum only take a 1.7kg ~ish force to cut so I will never build the machine to be able to pull 60kg it just makes no sense.If your CNC hits something hard, or the end of it travels do you want it to be able to rip the plastic apart or would you rather it skips a step?
I agree with Ryan on making sure you know why you are upgrading to 24 V. I have upgraded two 3D printers in the past from 12V to 24 Volt. One used a Rambo board the other used mks base v1.2. I did it so I could speed up the heaters. It made it so I could heat up the extruders and heat bed faster. Granted it was a lot of work. I had to replace one of the heat beds and all of the extruders. I had to rewire the other heat bed to use the 24 volt source. I had to rewire all the fans that would get cooked on the 24 volt source. Not fun and in the end not really worth it. I later downgraded one of the printers back to 12v just to get the cooling fans to work better.
If you are using the same Stepper drivers and the same firmware (aka no tweaks to power settings) I don’t think you will have any noticeable difference in how your steppers perform. IMHO.
I appreciate the feedback. I had the power supply sitting right there so it was a 2 minute install to test. I’ve had to dial up the power a lot to not have skipped steps for the current cuts I need to make. Initial observations are definitely more torque. I actually am starting to turn the power back down in the firmware slowly and still don’t have steps missing again like I had before. Don’t know how much difference yet but for my case it’s worth it since it cost nothing.
