While planning to buy a new printer for your home or office, it’s essential to consider the cost of electricity it can consume in your mind. You not only have to consider the various initial cost for arranging some essentials and the machine itself, but you should also remember the recurring costs.
One of the essential expenses is the cost of electricity or power consumption in a 3D printer. Without electricity, there will be no motor movement, heating process, and printing, so this cost is necessary and hard to avoid. Regular 3D printers do not use much power and electricity; while printing, they use only 50 to 150 Watts.
So if you want to know how much electricity does 3D printer uses, keep reading the informative piece post.
Contents
Variables in Calculating the Electric Power
Many firms and companies need to know the actual cost of electric power per part. While using the 3-D printer, the calculation of the following variables is essential.
- Filament used
- Amortization of the printer
- Operating cost
- Software programs like BCN3D Cloud teams
- 3D printer power consumption
How to Calculate the Power Consumption of a 3D Printer in one Hour?
For 3-D printers, if we know the electricity consumption for one hour, we can easily calculate the power consumption of each part of the printer at a particular time.
Let’s suppose the example of the BCN3D Epsilon W50 printer has a maximum consumption of 840W per hour. Also, considering that we are using both extruders in the printing process, a filament must be melted at 280 degrees centigrade, which is quite a high temperature, meaning that we are using as many as watts.
If we consider that the average price of electricity in 2021 in kWh in Spain was 0.253, the maximum amount of power you will spend in Epsilon W50 is 0.21. while if we print in off the peak hour, the printing for one hour will cost up to a maximum of 0.06 per hour.
Always remember that the prices will be if the printers ate using the maximum amount of electricity. So the electrical cost will be 0.03 per hour in the Epson printer or even less than this.
Factors Affecting Electricity Consumption
Other than the maximum power a 3D printer needs to operate, let’s see what other factors affect its electricity consumption.
- The Printer Model
Many models of 3D printers need much more electricity compared to BCN3D to reach 1700 W. So if you have a 3D printer having low efficiency can lead to double electricity costs.
- The Filament
Each material must be melted at distinct temperatures; for instance, ABC melts at 240 degrees and PLA melts at 200 degrees. So printing with PLA in place ABC will decrease the energy consumption.
- Printing Speed
The faster printing speed can reduce the overall electricity cost and increase the consumption per hour because the print head needs more electricity to work faster.
How to Reduce the Consumption of Electricity in a 3D Printer?
There are many ways to reduce the electricity consumption in the 3D printer that can reduce the cost of electricity per part by 80%. It is possible with IDEX technology and the software introduced by BCN3D.
Printing with Recommended
With the BCN3D Stratos slicer, you can notice that each material comes with different configurations. The configurations are analyzed and calculated, so the numbers come out accurately, efficiently, and quickly.
Printing ID Duplication or Mirror Mode
At the same time, if you print with two extruders, it reduces the time to half and the consumption of electricity by using the same printing surface, the same electronica, and the identical bar moving in the Y direction.
Printing in the off Hours
If you partially print any task and do not need it immediately you can set the printer mode to start peak hour using the BCN3D tool.
Frequently Asked Questions
Conclusion
The electricity consumption in a 3D printer is similar to the working of incandescent light bulbs. Moreover, different types of 3-D printers use different power consumption in terms of watts. A wide variety of 3D printers have print settings to calculate the power consumption. You have to do some essential calculations.
