Power Meter For Laser Engraver

Installed this power meter on my Redsail x900 tonight. Keeping track of the energy consumption to get an idea of how much energy this thing uses a month.

If it’s anything like a ‘smartmeter’ you’ll wish you never bought it.
Constantly watching it and watching your pennies draining away. :sob:

Nice! Are you logging the output?

Just as an FYI, a 100W laser uses about the same as a 100W lightbulb, while running at ~90%. The chiller can use more than the laser.

When I use the 100W machine for ~6 hours plus a day, 6 days a week, over a month, my bill is around $15-20 more than when I don’t use it at all. We pay about 35c.KWh.

hmm…
Given all other peripherals are off, My 40W CO2 @16mA pulls 240W/1A on 235VAC. that is according to a similar power meter.

The meter keeps track of watt hour usage and can be reset.

Still need to get the rest of the system, chiller, blower and air pump ran thru the meter.

Once that is done then I will keep track of the job run time for the month and then get an idea of how much running the laser cost per minute/hour of job run time.

Of course I know this will vary based on engraving time, cutting time and power settings but it should get me close.

Lol right!

My 60 watt tube at 17-18 ma is using close to 300 watts. Need to do a 5 second pulse to get an accurate value but this is what it looked to be when running a short test.

Just a thought as I’m looking at my set-up.

Have you considered other costs associated with running a laser, such as the power used in fume extraction, lighting and heating (prevent cooling water freezing during cold spells) of premises. Consumables such as laser tubes and fume extractor filter replacements, all of which are high cost drivers in my case.

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I measured mine some time ago and got about 160 watts at idle including the “aquarium” style coolant pump, and 610 watts with a tube current of 24 mA.

Now I have proper chiller which adds… more.

Come on Bo, I know you know better than that.
You got a CO2 laser tube that’s 100% efficient? My 80 watt tube draws about 450 watts at 24 mA.

FFS, you people have no sense of humour.

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its a useful addition but you would be better off running all the kit from a trailing extension lead and plug that into a energy consumption meter so that would include things like your chiller, water, air pump, those are the things that consume, not the laser psu or the CNS part. They are very reasonable on Ali Express and actually work very well, I use one so I can price some of the larger jobs more accurately.

One thing I am looking at this moment is a hour logger, that will actually tell me the number of hours that my laser tube has used. There are several available from a vibration detecto, plain old 12 volt dc for a boat engine and a new one that runs off induction, I am waiting for it to arrive to see the the High Voltage Tube line can induce enough current to make the meter work, they only cost a few dollars so if it doesnt ill fit it too my chainsaw or quad…

Im interested to count the hours that the tube actually works and lasts for. The other vibration monitor would not work and the 12 volt one really would be an overall time fon the machine which is not what I am looking for.