I’ve got a perculiar issue with my printer. It’s using a cheap Chinese board that it came with (the same or a clone of the Anet board). When running the hot end at or above 190°, it seems as though the board is having a hard time supplying enough current to keep a consistent temperature. The only reason I can tell is because my heatbreak fan and part cooling fan both start to drop in speed enough that there’s an audible difference (haven’t checked for voltage or current drops yet). My question is, could I use the mosfets thats normally recommended for the hot bed for my hot end to fix this issue, or is it a better idea to just abandon the board entirely and get something different?
If voltage on other devices are dropping, then it’s more likely an issue with the power supply, not the mosfets. You can measure the voltage drop across the drain-source of the mosfet to determine the loss through the mosfet, or measure the output voltage of your power supply to determine if it is dropping. A high voltage drop across the mosfet means that the mosfet is poorly rated, a high drop in power supply voltage means the supply is poorly rated.
I agree with the power supply. Printers like the A8 come pretty umder-specced to begin with.
It is possible to use mosfets like those for heat beds on the hot end if you want to try.
Thing is, and what I didn’t mention, I upgraded the power supply to a 30A (was 20A), so I was skeptical on that. That does, however, make sense now that you mentioned it. The hotend it’s self draws about 3A, and I’m not running the bed (that actually makes matters worse, but I don’t need it running since I’m using PLA only). I guess I’ll try the mosfet, and if that doesn’t work, atleast I’ll have that for the bed if I ever use it.
Thanks for the advice!
Use a multimeter and look around. It’s especially odd if you have a 30a power supply and aren’t running the bed. What model power supply? Is it 12v or 24v? Can you measure the resistance of the heater?
It’s 12V. Some cheap one from Amazon. Doesn’t say the manufacturer and the model number is really generic (the numbers are just the mains voltage and the DC voltage). I suspected the heater might be the issue, because I’m having a hard time keeping a consistent temperature no matter how slow I print or if the fan is on or not, but I asked on Reddit and was told it was PID tuning (I ran auto PID tuning with the same results afterwards).