The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

The New Hotness

  • MakerGear M2: 24 V Power vs. LED Lighting

    I installed the 24 V white LED panels under the M2’s X-axis gantry, connected it to a 24 V wall wart, and all was good:

    LED Panel - on M2 Gantry
    LED Panel – on M2 Gantry

     

    The red plastic block shows that picture happened before the V4 hot end installation…

    Now, with the V4 hot end and fans installed, I popped a 24 V supply brick off the heap and connected another set of Powerpoles:

    M2 - Powerpole connector block
    M2 – Powerpole connector block

    The 24 V supply now powers everything on the RAMBo board, with the platform heater running from the 40 V supply through the DC-DC solid state relay.

    Unfortunately, wiring the LED panels to the RAMBo MOSFET driving the fans didn’t quite work. Turns out that the extruder PWM pulses produce corresponding LED blinks; the V4 hot end draws 1.5 A and that’s enough to flicker the lights. So they’re back on the wall wart and glow steadily again.

    For whatever it’s worth, the panels don’t have limiting resistors, just eight 150 mA LED emitters in series…