I saw one previous thread on the idea of using a UPS Backup battery with your Onefinity Journeyman… That thread however seemed to be centered on how to send an interrupt signal to the controller in case of a power outage.
I am more interested in using it for the average “blip” or brownout situation so I guess my questions are really this.
How much power draw does the OF Journeyman X-50, the controller, and a Makita router draw?
How long could I hope to “survive” a typical Florida power blip and not lose the job?
Could you get a UPS such as this one at Costco (or even two and split the duties between them)
if you want to run a CNC machine during a power outage, it’s not a electronic UPS that you would use, but a engine-generator. Usually the power of a CNC machine is much too high and a UPS to match this consumption would be way too expensive.
How long is a “typical Florida power blip”? If you really have power outages in your country, question is if you should own an engine-generator anyway. Just think of your frozen food.
I’ve only had one lengthy power cut in the last fifteen years since I live where I live today. It was in the newspaper: A European herring gull had been sitting in the power station and when it took off, its wingspan of up to 60 inches short-circuited two high-voltage lines and was literally fried. I have UPS for my IT but the CNC machine would not have been able to be supplied during that power outage.
And even if you buy a UPS that will be strong enough to power your CNC machine, question is will running your program take longer than your UPS battery power will last.
But the question is if you need some reserve power at all. There are some small UPS Raspberry Pi add-ons like this one or this one that just power the Raspberry Pi with a LiIon rechargeable battery and you could wire a circuit that will sense if main power fails and triggers a controlled emergency stop before the battery power is gone. A bit breakage is difficult to prevent anyway in case of power loss. I think for cases of power outage I would make sure that the program is stopped in a controlled way, and then make sure you can restart it when the power is back.
You can restart an interrupted g-code program if you find the offsets in the buildbotics-derived Onefinity Controller’s logfile and enter them manually after a reboot, and then either restart the program from the beginning, or edit it so that the correct modal commands are set and it continues at a certain point. For positioning repeatability and accuracy after a power outage (or after a normal machine shutdown), you would benefit of retrofitting limit sensors to your Original/X-50/PRO machine, as the stock stall homing is not as accurate as you may need.
A Power generator (which I should really have anyway) doesn’t kick on fast enough to provide uninterrupted power to a machine. It normally takes a few moments for it to kick in. The “typical Florida power blip” as I called it isn’t really normal around here but it does happen. When it does, it usually lasts about a minute or two at most. There are actually thousands of homes being built around our little paradise, so it’s usually caused by some lineman somewhere who flips the wrong switch while working in a different area.
I am not really looking to resolve a multi-hour outage, though you’re right, I should have a power generator to supplant all the big stuff, but since the X-50/Pro doesn’t have a “resume from power outage” function as the Elite does, I’m just wondering how much of a power draw the system actually is.
I’m thinking to put the router on one, the controller and system on the other. In the event where it’s needed, forego the dust control because I know that’s a huge power draw.