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Hey Joseph Prusa, my PSU died after 10 days.  

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michael.k95
(@michael-k95)
Active Member
Hey Joseph Prusa, my PSU died after 10 days.

Came to my printer at 5am, it stopped printing. I thought maybe a jam although it didn’t beep. Just frozen mid print, with no power/lcd upon closer inspection. Flipped the power button, nothing. I guess it’s safe to say my PSU died after just 10 days of ownership?

Now I’d get a replacement, but it’s a lot of work to require only for it to fail again in another 10 days. I may get a replacement anyway, and throw it in the trash. At least they would be aware that their PSU’s are junk and lose some money sending me another worthless power supply. Mine was always doing some light clicking, but based on what I read online, it’s “normal”. My PSU was always hot to the touch as well, which I thought was unusual considering PC PSU’s don’t heat up at all.

Anyway, seems I can’t print anymore for at least a couple days or weeks while I order a non-junk PSU off Amazon and learn how to wire it per the helpful people in this forum that offer a solution.

Joseph decided to save about $2-5USD and bundle his printer with a junk power supply, I can’t understand it. The forums are flooded with PSU complaints from what I saw. Why save these few dollars and ruin your company’s image and reputation? Raise the price a couple bucks and let your customer print longer than a couple days before their PSU fails.

I just wanted to say, “Thanks Joseph! Thanks for this great introduction to 3D printing and your company!”

Posted : 25/09/2018 11:15 am
surfgeorge
(@surfgeorge)
Estimable Member
Re: Hey Joseph Prusa, my PSU died after 10 days.

Sorry to hear about your problems!
I'd talk to support, they have always been very helpful and supportive.

Regarding the power supply, it can't be that bad if 1000s of printers are out there printing day in day out.
That does not change that you are one of the unlucky few who have this issue.
Hope you can fix it soon and get back to printing.

Posted : 25/09/2018 12:09 pm
Jorg
 Jorg
(@jorg)
Estimable Member
Re: Hey Joseph Prusa, my PSU died after 10 days.


[...]My PSU was always hot to the touch as well, which I thought was unusual considering PC PSU’s don’t heat up at all.
[...]

They do heat up. The enclosure of a standard atx psu is however much bigger than it needs to be which allows for it to have more empty space inside; this in part prevents transfer of heat to the enclosure and as a result of that it does not feel hot to the touch. In addition, virtually all PC PSUs have cooling fans (usually a 12-14cm at the bottom, sometimes an 8cm at the back) which in modern PSUs are as silent as possible and even temperature controlled. A great deal of the time, a PC does not need that much power, so the PSU can get away with a very slow turning of even switched off fan for some time. There are passive PSUs for PCs, but they have heatsinks on their enclosure and recommend that there is airflow around it (there even are watercooled PSUs).
The more industrial style PC PSUs (e.g. for 1U or 2U rack mount computers) are noisy due to their cooling fans.

Still, bad luck that yours failed... hope you get it fixed soon.

Posted : 25/09/2018 12:18 pm
nathan0876
(@nathan0876)
Estimable Member
Re: Hey Joseph Prusa, my PSU died after 10 days.

I agree with you OP, included PSU is a joke. Open it up and inspect the soldering and you will realize just how much of a junker it really is, its sad.

Posted : 25/09/2018 9:43 pm
Nikolai
(@nikolai)
Noble Member
Re: Hey Joseph Prusa, my PSU died after 10 days.


I agree with you OP, included PSU is a joke. Open it up and inspect the soldering and you will realize just how much of a junker it really is, its sad.

If your measure of quality is a soldering then you shouldn't inspect your electronic devices made in China (most likely most of them). For some people like me this "joke" is working reliable 24/7. I like it's passive cooled without any fan.

Often linked posts:
Going small with MMU2
Real Multi Material
My prints on Instagram

Posted : 25/09/2018 11:52 pm
nathan0876
(@nathan0876)
Estimable Member
Re: Hey Joseph Prusa, my PSU died after 10 days.



I agree with you OP, included PSU is a joke. Open it up and inspect the soldering and you will realize just how much of a junker it really is, its sad.

If your measure of quality is a soldering then you shouldn't inspect your electronic devices made in China (most likely most of them). For some people like me this "joke" is working reliable 24/7. I like it's passive cooled without any fan.

I have inspected/fixed the inside of hundreds, maybe 1000's, of electronics products, id say 99% made in china.

Not all china made products are crap, like anywhere else you get what you pay for. Ive seen china electronics soldered so bad i was shocked it worked at all even with the defect i opened it to fix i was surprised they even powered on, ive also seen others that are better than most made in USA/CAN/EU made products. It all depends on how much money you want to spend and which specific manufacturer/factory you go with for your products.

The china made automatically = crap mentality is just not true.

I replaced my stock unit with a china made 400w unit(cant remember brand, some weird off brand, lextor or lexus or something, is for LED lights apparently), costing only $45 CDN shipped, and it has much better soldering. It still had to fix a few cold joints, it worked fine out of box but i opened it up anyways and while open fixed a few suspect joints, and it being so much higher power rated stays very cool. It also provides a true 24V even under full load something the stock unit cant even come close to accomplishing it drops over a volt under load, sometimes even drops 2V if a large power spike is happening like start of warm up.

Posted : 26/09/2018 12:25 am
Nikolai
(@nikolai)
Noble Member
Re: Hey Joseph Prusa, my PSU died after 10 days.


... I replaced my stock unit with a china made 400w unit(cant remember brand, some weird off brand, lextor or lexus or something, is for LED lights apparently), costing only $45 CDN shipped, and it has much better soldering. It still had to fix a few cold joints, it worked fine out of box but i opened it up anyways and while open fixed a few suspect joints, and it being so much higher power rated stays very cool....

So where is the difference? You opened it up and found cold joints. I'm pretty sure if you order 50k+ units of this power supplies, you will have some percentage fail rate. Let's assume it's 1%, means 500 people would complain. If you count how many unique people (not posts/threads/entries) did complain about the power supply here in this forum, you will get maybe 10-20. And the circumstance that it happens to some people more then once is an indicator that something is wrong with either their printer or power source.

It's easy to call something "crap". Reality is that the current power supply is still good enough for most of the people and the replacement of this unit is still way cheaper then including more priced one.

Often linked posts:
Going small with MMU2
Real Multi Material
My prints on Instagram

Posted : 26/09/2018 12:47 am
Kcnjamie
(@kcnjamie)
Eminent Member
Re: Hey Joseph Prusa, my PSU died after 10 days.

Isn't there a fuse that can be checked in the PSU?

On a side note to the OP, although I know its frustrating to have failures, this company has been great at correcting them. This is my 5th printer and my first "non chinese" printer. The difference in every single aspect of owning it vs them in night and day. Stick with them and they will make it right.

Posted : 26/09/2018 2:18 am
JMcK
 JMcK
(@jmck)
Reputable Member
Re: Hey Joseph Prusa, my PSU died after 10 days.

I also had a PSU that died early on. While I followed the power supply issues in the past, I’ll admit I haven’t been keeping up lately.

To my recollection though none of the complaints were about the PSU being cheap, or cheaply made. It was more that the printer itself was coming too close to the spec load of the PSU. There also seemed to be a correlation that there were more failures in the US and other countries with 110V mains. OK, so maybe we’re arguing semantics, and Prusa should have specified a higher wattage power supply, but that was not a cost decision, that was a noise decision. They wanted a fan-less PSU, and fanless designs become more rare with higher power output.

I did end up replacing my PSU with a 350 Watt Mean Well off Amazon for <$30 plus, probably another $10-15 for wire, connectors, screws, and a switch. With the case printed from Thingiverse, you’d never know it wasn’t stock. I’m happy with it, but it does have a fan that cycles on-and-off as the prints progress. Others who have done the same conversion find the fan annoying. I find the fan noise less annoying than the ticking sound the old one made as the bed cycled.

When someone asks you if you're a god, you say, "YES!"

Posted : 26/09/2018 12:27 pm
Neal
 Neal
(@neal)
Reputable Member
Re: Hey Joseph Prusa, my PSU died after 10 days.

I heard somewhere that 220 was just more efficient than 110. Particularly on things that can run on either or with just a flip of switch (well pumps for instance).

Then, of course, we as Americans do like to complain a lot.

Could be either or,

Neal

Posted : 26/09/2018 3:03 pm
RufusClupea
(@rufusclupea)
Reputable Member
Re: Hey Joseph Prusa, my PSU died after 10 days.


Then, of course, we as Americans do like to complain a lot.

That's because we do it so well.... __ 🙄 __ 😛

That's "MISTER Old Fart" to you!

Posted : 26/09/2018 4:08 pm
nathan0876
(@nathan0876)
Estimable Member
Re: Hey Joseph Prusa, my PSU died after 10 days.



... I replaced my stock unit with a china made 400w unit(cant remember brand, some weird off brand, lextor or lexus or something, is for LED lights apparently), costing only $45 CDN shipped, and it has much better soldering. It still had to fix a few cold joints, it worked fine out of box but i opened it up anyways and while open fixed a few suspect joints, and it being so much higher power rated stays very cool....

So where is the difference? You opened it up and found cold joints. I'm pretty sure if you order 50k+ units of this power supplies, you will have some percentage fail rate. Let's assume it's 1%, means 500 people would complain. If you count how many unique people (not posts/threads/entries) did complain about the power supply here in this forum, you will get maybe 10-20. And the circumstance that it happens to some people more then once is an indicator that something is wrong with either their printer or power source.

It's easy to call something "crap". Reality is that the current power supply is still good enough for most of the people and the replacement of this unit is still way cheaper then including more priced one.

The quality difference was noticeable with the one i purchased as a replacement being obliviously superior in build quality. Im sure Prusa is spending less than $20 a PSU though so thats to be expected with such a cheap unit.

Posted : 26/09/2018 4:51 pm
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