How much power does a 3D printer usually draw? My mother is worried im gonna run up the light bill running that printer 24/7 and since im the one who pays that bill im a little worried too lol.
I don’t have any specific numbers and I’m not very knowledgeable on this topic, but I’ve seen people typically mentioning numbers around 250W-300W, ie. think of a lower-/mid-end desktop PC.
That’s completely dependent on your printer. With an I3 clone 250 to 300 watts is a reasonable estimation. You can always just run an ammeter in line with your printer if you have a good one. Really and truly it might be a few dollars more a month but at a kilowatt hr price here I don’t think it would make much of a difference
Naawww, worse case scenario. Every light bulb in your house explodes from an overload and your house catches fire from the sparks
~$20-30 will get you a Kill-A-Watt device. you plug in the device to it, it to the wall and tell it how much power costs per KwH in your neighborhood. Run the printer for a day and then check the device to get an estimate of how much it’ll cost all year. Then you’ll also be able to check your TV, fridge, etc and maybe find some spots where replacing an old appliance would pay for itself quickly.
@Adrian_Montgomery lol. I use all LED bulbs those shouldnt explode lol. @Tom_L that would be an awesome idea i might look into investing in one
I have a killawatt meter and measured my rigidbot over a year ago. I printed 6 parts that each took about 6 hours to print. I was printing in ABS so it measured prints under the higest draw due to the bed and nozzle temperatures used. My printer is not enclosed and the bed was kept at 110 for the entire print. When all was said and done and I multiplied the power consumed by my electric rates (in tennessee) the total cost for 36 hours of printing was about $1.50. I have the exact readings saved somewhere if anyone is curious. I was printing from an SD card though so if you print tethered to a laptop or desktop you will have to factor that in as well.
$1.50 for 36 hours? Yeah i have no problem with that at all lol
You local utility should give you the price on their website, but off-peak electricity is about $0.11-$0.15 per kWh in most parts of the US. Most modest sized printers will consume in the range of 150-250W when printing and so will consume a kWh every 4-6 hours when printing. I.e. don’t worry about it.
When the printer is idle, the wall consumption is highly variable and this is where things can get expensive. I have a beaglebone black as print server and a Azteeg X5 Mini brain and they drop to about 6W total power when idle. My friend has several makerbots and depending on the exact configuration, those go from 5W to 30W. 30W 24/7 can add up over the course of a month, and you’re not getting much from that idle power consumption.
Man… my recall was way off. Found my old post from over a year ago.
"Each section took between 5-7 hours to print. Due to the thickness of the walls, the assembly has very little infill and is almost 100% solid. Total weight of the assembly is 542g, so just over 1/2 a spool of filament.
Here is the breakdown of the readings:
Base-1.58 kWh
2nd layer - 1.32kWh
3rd layer - 1.55kWh
4th layer - 1.67 kWh
lid - 1.37 kWh
Total - 7.49 kWh
Since NES currently charges $0.09944/kWh, that means it cost a total of $0.75 in electricity for about 30 hours of printing."
Even better for those of you wondering about the cost. 
I measured my Mendel90 to 18W when idle and about 80W when printing.
The heated bed eats quite a bit of juice. Use PLA and turn down/off the heated bed.
@Jason_D thank you!
You’re welcome. I think in my first post the reason i thought i remembered it being about $1.50, was because that would be about what it cost to print a whole spool at the electric rates in my area at the time.
And that was with abs on an open printer. I expect pla would be significantly cheaper.
How was the quality of the prints with an open printer? I hear ABS prints can be brittle is not enclosed
Printers with an unheated bed are less than 100W average, with a heated bed at ABS temperatures a bit over 200W.
You guys have it good with your cheap coal power, over here we pay around 0.25€ (0.27$) per kWh.
You’re getting 240 instead of 120, so that’s basically the same price per actual usage.
@Tom_L that’s not how electricity works.
@Tom_L literally everything you just said is incorrect. I’d suggest taking a stroll over to Wikipedia.
bah, I had that backwards in my head again. nm