The Advanced Printer Control (APC) Device Automatically Cuts Power After Your 3D Print Finishes
This standalone system controls the AC power to a 3D printer in order to reduce wear on the fans and power supply.
Even the fastest 3D printers on the market can easily take several hours, or even days, to complete a single job. That’s not a big deal, because you can leave your printer running without constantly monitoring it as long as the appropriate safety precautions are in place — the most important being those that prevent fires, such as thermal runaway protection. But if you leave your printer unattended, then there is a good chance it’ll still be turned on for a long period of time after the print has finished. This Advanced Printer Control (APC) device, developed by TheGrim, automatically cuts power to your 3D printer after the job has finished.
The Advanced Printer Control device is capable of completely shutting off power to your 3D printer within a few minutes of a print job finishing. This saves power (which is non-trivial even when the printer is cool) and also reduces wear on your printer’s power supply, cooling fans, and LCD screen. In the long term, you’ll extend the life of your 3D printer while also saving a small amount of money on power. APC achieves this by monitoring how much power your printer is consuming. If it goes from using a lot of power (during printer) to using a small amount of power (during idle), then APC will automatically disconnect power. That threshold is adjustable and set based on your printer’s baseline power consumption when the heated bed and hot end are turned off, so you don’t have to worry about the power being disconnected when it is still printing.
APC is controlled by an ESP8266 module; though networking isn’t currently being used. TheGrim plans to add network control and monitoring in the future. A small LCD screen is used to display the current status of the APC, so you can easily check what it thinks your 3D printer is doing. Power to the 3D printer is controlled by a TRIAC (TRIode for Alternating Current), which is a bit like a transistor that is capable of handling bidirectional AC current. Those components are soldered onto a custom PCB and everything is housed within a 3D-printed enclosure. TheGrim has produced four prototypes so far, and reports that they’re all working as intended without any issues. That means it should be safe for you to build your own APC to use with your 3D printer.