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Power supply?

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Murudai

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So I'm wondering, how do you actually power a laser scanner?

I mean you have the galvo system, laser modules, additional cooling fans... How is the power supplied to all these items?

Do you need to get a central power supply and power everything off that? Or just wire all the components in parallel to a power cable?
 





some items like the galvos and DMX control board come with their own supply, but for other things such as cooling fans or maybe DIY lasers you'd want to hook into a central psu (pc supplies are easy to adapt for this)
 
Yeah, most things come with their own power supplies, except fans.

But what about connecting it up to mains power? If you have 3 laser modules and 1 set of galvos, you'll have 4 power cables coming out the back. How can you merge those in to 1 power cable ?
 
So can you get all the outputs from that computer psu and connect them up straight to the modules and the galvos? Would it have enough outputs for 3 laser modules and a scanner system?
 
Murudai said:
So can you get all the outputs from that computer psu and connect them up straight to the modules and the galvos? Would it have enough outputs for 3 laser modules and a scanner system?
Click to expand...

depends on what voltages you need - computer psus have plenty of juice to run just about anything you'd need - and if you'd wanna use the PSUs that come with stuff like the galvos you can then just wire them all in parallel and have a single mains cable leaving the unit (terminal strips are quite useful for stuff like this)
 
i have had the same questions.. here is the partial solutio i came up with

Your going to have a few power suplies since the scanner and lasers all come with them.. i however have built my own red laser that requires 5-9v of power..,

my solution would be to integrate a strip where all the power suplies can get the 120v(240v) they need to step down to DC whatever.. what would be ideal however is a supply that had leads for 5v 9v and 13v

5v for the fans
9v for the red laser
and 13v for the scanner..

green lab lasers come with a 120v ready supply and so would a blue laser unless your using bluray wich would need the 9v (just like the red)

so if anyone knows of a supply that could do 5 9 and 13 (or could build me one for cheap) im interested...
 
MarioMaster said:
depends on what voltages you need - computer psus have plenty of juice to run just about anything you'd need - and if you'd wanna use the PSUs that come with stuff like the galvos you can then just wire them all in parallel and have a single mains cable leaving the unit (terminal strips are quite useful for stuff like this)
Click to expand...

Okay, thanks, that was the clarification I was looking for. Like I said in my first post, I'm just wondering about wiring all the power supplies in parallel and plugging in to the power point like that.

And it seems that'll work fine, so I'll just use that :) I'll use the PSU that come with the lasers/galvos because that's what they're there for, just more of a hassle to find a computer PSU which happens to output the same. Plus, the laser modules need the TTL/analogue, which is part of the driver.
 
keeperx said:
i have had the same questions.. here is the partial solutio i came up with

Your going to have a few power suplies since the scanner and lasers all come with them.. i however have built my own red laser that requires 5-9v of power..,

my solution would be to integrate a strip where all the power suplies can get the 120v(240v) they need to step down to DC whatever.. what would be ideal however is a supply that had leads for 5v 9v and 13v

5v for the fans
9v for the red laser
and 13v for the scanner..

green lab lasers come with a 120v ready supply and so would a blue laser unless your using bluray wich would need the 9v (just like the red)

so if anyone knows of a supply that could do 5 9 and 13 (or could build me one for cheap) im interested...
Click to expand...

Your going to want more than 5V for the fans, try 12V, 5V is generally useless in 40-80mm PC fans.
 
in my scanner the scanner are powered by their own 240v psu but everything else is powered from the PC PSU
 
find a ac to dc converter around 12V with the right amperage and get a voltage regulator to take down to w/e you need
 
andy_con said:
in my scanner the scanner are powered by their own 240v psu but everything else is powered from the PC PSU
Click to expand...

You mean USB power with that?

I doubt usb would supply enough current to the lasers, even if the soundcard magically registered as a 500 mA device...
 
he probably means straight from Power Supply Unit because you can get 5 and 12 volts off those beauty's
 
Benm said:
You mean USB power with that?

I doubt usb would supply enough current to the lasers, even if the soundcard magically registered as a 500 mA device...
Click to expand...

when did i say USB? lol

read the above, i have a big computer psu powering everything
 
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