So I am attempting to engrave on the ceramic tile which I am making progress 
but that’s not the only purpose for this topic I have a question. My laser is an atom stack p7 M30 and my dad is concerned about the electrical bill with laser usage especially with tile as well as with regular use now I might be wrong and please correct me if I am but on one tile project it requires 5 hrs to complete that’s where my dad’s concern comes in will that raise the electricity bill or will there be not much chang to the bill…. OR am I not setting up the correct settings for said project ? My location is in Oklahoma and my laser is 5 watt diode I did try to contact the electric company and they couldn’t tell me any information
The website for this product specifies the 5.5 W output of the laser and also lists a 30 W electrical output, but it’s almost certainly referencing the power consumption or 30 Watts. Electricity is measured by kiloWatt hours and charged in the same manner. The rates local to us have recently been raised to US$0.14 per kWh. Yes, fourteen cents per kiloWatt hour.
Let’s kick the number up a bit to twenty cents per kWh. The k is one thousand, which means you’d have to run the laser for 1000 / 30 or about 33 hours to use one kWh, or twenty cents.
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So let’s make it super simple. I was looking up rates on diode lasers and it seemed like with steppers and laser, they consume about 40W, or .04 KWH. For a 5 hour pass, that’s .2 KWH, or in Texas, about 2 cents. The electricity usage from a PC is higher. A TV is typically about 100W I believe so tell him you’re saving him money by using your laser and not watching TV… 
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[quote=“Texaswoodcnc, post:3, topic:93835, full:true”]
So let’s make it super simple. I was looking up rates on diode lasers and it seemed like with steppers and laser, they consume about 40W, or .04 KWH. For a 5 hour pass, that’s .2 KWH, or in Texas, about 2 cents. The electricity usage from a PC is higher. A TV is typically about 100W I believe so tell him you’re saving him money by using your laser and not watching TV…
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thanks for the information from you both I had a feeling it wasn’t that much of a hike with the laser usage but I do understand where he is coming from. But I will tell him it’s a lot cheaper then tv 
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Just to put 2 cents in here…The laser uses F…all power, no long tested my 5.5 watt…And it’s the compressor that shoots the power up…I’m using my shop compressor at between 2 n 10 psi and it noticeable increase in consumption…
An iPhone 11 charger is 5W and draws about 135W a month or just about 1.5kW/h a year. In the US we are at about 13 cents a kW hour. In Hawaii it’s $0.31, and the cheapest is Louisiana at $0.0947. I believe this is around 2020…
So advise your dad that if he had 10 of these wall chargers it would cost him about $1.95 a year or if he lived in Hawaii, a whopping $4.63 a year.
He should probably move to Louisianan and save himself the 25¢ a year…
The Apple charger still draws about 60% of it’s charging current after the phone is charged. Many spin-off phone chargers can draw over 50% of that drawn by the original.
There are millions or more of these. And they draw millions (or more) of kW/h a year… Each kW/h creates about 1 pound of CO2… great for our lasers… 
Lol I told him it was cheaper to run my laser then a tv like earlier suggested he was rather surprised he sat down and said ohh weird
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Ok just curious before I actually do it I have a question about engraved tiles I did it with the black paint now my question is will lacquer thinner eat the etched in paint or am I safe ? To use it I havn’t cleaned any of the tiles yet
It costs nothing to start a new topic: burying a question at the bottom of this one won’t get much traction. 
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If you really want to know how much it costs to run a laser-job, get one of those “Kill-A-Watt” type devices that goes between the power-cord and your wall outlet. It will tell you exactly how many kW have been used. There are many variations on these devices, some that have a simple display readout, others that communicate through a smart-phone app, and even some very expensive ones that link to your computer network and can monitor many different circuits at once.
The basic ones are not terribly expensive.
I love the idea of this. The irony, though, in this case is that the cost of this is likely to be higher than running the laser for any reasonable amount of time. If we assume roughly $35 for the meter, that would be close to running the laser continuously for an entire year.
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Oh, certainly the cost is higher than running the laser. However, it is useful for understanding the power drain of many devices around the house, including how much power is consumed by your laser power supply being plugged in, without the laser running.
A lot of these things are sold as “smart switches” that you use to control a block that plugs into the wall outlet, and connects through Wi-Fi to your smart-phone. From your phone, you can not only switch power to whatever is plugged into the little block, but read instantaneous line voltage and electrical load, along with accumulated power consumption.
The one I use came in a pack of four, and at the time cost about $20 for the bunch. It’s a bit more now on Amazon, but there are many others like them. Here’s the link
I’m not intending to promote this particular device, it’s just an example of one that works reasonably well.
Oh don’t get me wrong… I’m not disparaging the idea. I think it’s a good one and good practice in general to understand power consumption of devices. Just funny considering the original premise of the Topic.
I’m an electronics guy, been doing it for a living for 30 years. … I just bought 4 of these to see how close my calculations are to reality when I’m running a vacuum, planer, laser and computer at the same time. (I had to add a 240 VAC feed to my garage for my CNC as well as a second 110VAC feed because my calculations showed I’d be popping a breaker every 10 minutes if I tried to run that all at the same time.) Will be interesting to see the inrush if it’s that fast with data collection, but would also love to see what the power consumption of the laser is at 25% when I’m doing tumblers. Yeah, I’m a data nerd.
Most of these devices will give you instantaneous and cumulative readouts. Only a few will actually log the data so you can go back and see how it changed over time; for that capability you’ll end up spending quite a bit more. You might consider looking for a “recording” clamp-meter, or something similar.
I have a clamp meter, just liked the idea of being able to access these any time without having to isolate one leg. If it sends it to my phone, I’ll find a way to log it.
Well, the phone app certainly receives regular updates (about once/second, I think) of Watts and Volts. If you can access that data stream, you are golden.
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My wife and I have a plug-in hybrid RAV4 Prime and a Volvo XC40 Recharge. Our electric bill went up only about $50/month charging the cars…we do charge at off-peak hours (9pm → 11am). I have an 80w laser that I run all the time and that might add a $1 or $2/month
I have read where the cost is minimal but I have been trying to engrave on ceramic tile and the length of time is a concern for the life of my laser module. Usually a diode laser has a 1000 hours and when I am engraving a 4"x4" tile, it takes 8 to 9 hours with some images. I am not sorry about the electricity bill but the life of my laser. Am I wrong to be concerned?
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Honestly, if you’re doing that much engraving, swap to a CO2. It’s a little up front investment but the passes go WAY faster and the life of a CO2 is a bit longer. That’s what drove me to upgrade. I have a Stinger III CAMaster CNC machine and it came with a 7W diode laser. I was running a 45 minute pass on a cutting board one day with the laser and it occurred to me that I could spend $5,000 and run the pass in 3 or 4 minutes instead of running a $35,000 machine for an hour. 