I am anticipating a power outage and plan to place an active print in pause. Will I be able to recover since it was in pause when the power went out?
Hey @dstern,
Great question. At the moment there’s no way to resume a print after a power outage. The main reason for this is that the printer won’t know how long the pause has been, and if the pause is long enough, the print likely wouldn’t finish properly anyways. I know that doesn’t help your situation but just to provide a little background.
As far as potential options in your case, one thing many users have done is buy a UPS(Uninterruptible Power Supply) to keep the printer running throughout the outage.
Maybe someone here has a recommendation for a particular unit they like!
I’m using an Eaton 9PX1000iRT2U (that’s the 230V model, the 120V I think is 9PX1000RT2U without the i).
I figured the printer probably isn’t too sensitive to minor fluctuations (will have a switchmode PSU after all) but a dual-converstion UPS was better than a line-interactive - considering the cost of the printer even the more expensive UPS seems a pretty trivial cost.
For just my F3, it should last more than 3 hours during a print - the printer uses quite a bit of power at the beginning while it’s heating, mixing, and whatever else, but settles down to very low consumption for the remainder of the print.
If you need longer, can stack up to 4 additional battery packs onto it.
I posted some graphs of power and estimated runtime here: The printer (form3) not continue printing after power outage - #3 by DKirch
How long will the power be out?
We do a lot of things on the sub-100um level in my office. I know from experience that passing busses, subways, nearby footsteps, etc. have a mechanical influence on our equipment. I also realized that sometimes we do prints that take 15-20 hours and I’d hate to have one fail because of a brief power fluctuation. So, to address both problems, put a relatively heavy (usually rack mount) APC brand UPS under my Form3. It’s also sitting on a heavy steel cabinet sitting on vibration dampening pads. The rating and battery capacity of the UPS is seriously overkill, but I mainly wanted it for the weight. We paid about $350 for it.
Hi dar5000.
While that works and may give extra stability I would personally recommend covering the rack UPS somehow. Spills may happen (for countless reasons) and that may not be a good thing in a UPS.
A 2U mini rack can also do the trick.
@dstern, I run an APC Pro 1500S backup power supply that I have both my Form 2 and CR10S Pro Printers connected to. It will run both printers for at least 30 mins during a (Major) power outage but the main reason you really would want to run a UPS is not to keep the Printer running for an extended period of time (hours on end) but rather for those brief “brownouts” where the Mains power dips just low enough to cause everything in your house to shut off or reset. My UPS is currently showing 35 “events” where the UPS backup power was activated. I know for a fact that one of those events was while I was printing and everything else in the house shut down or reset but the Printer just kept running. Saved a 13 hour print!
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