Surge Protector

[Gabriel Rangel]

I am trying to find out what kind of surge protector would be good for a Laser Engraver.
I know most of yall probley have one already. We really did not have to worry about that
problem with the rolling black out but now that it have been so hot. We are have them
and i was need to add one to my engraver. Thank You

[Mike Null]

Gabriel

This has come up frequently so a search will yield a lot of reading.

[Dan Hintz]

A surge protector will do nothing to help with blackouts/brownouts... you need a UPS.

[Gabriel Rangel]

Do you know a good place to get one I know they have them like a Office depot
would that be good enough.

[ray hampton]

talk to your electric power company about installing a surges protector for your equipment

[John Noell]

Gabriel, it would help if you put what machine you have in your signature block. You probably need a BIG UPS for your laser if you need to keep it going on battery power for a job when a blackout hits. Most UPSs are for computers and only need to keep them going for a matter of minutes. For voltage fluctuations, we use an APC Line-R regulator. But if the power goes out, so does the laser.

[Gabriel Rangel]

Ok well I just want it to say on for a few min to be able to turn it off and not have it just go down and fry my system.
The engraver is on it own breaker.

[Thomas Bank]

APC has them in all sizes - from desktop to data center size.

http://www.apc.com/products/category.cfm?id=13

They have an online calculator where you can put in the wattage of your equipment and it will give you the time reserve for different sizes of UPS. Or give them a call and they'll talk to you about your needs.

[Michael Hunter]

You need an "always on" or "double conversion" UPS for running a laser.

The brownout as a normal UPS switches over to battery operation does not affect a normal PC, but would almost certainly upset a laser.
The "always on" type does not have this switchover delay.

For reasons that are not obvious to me, UPSs are usually rated in VA (Volts/Amps) : to get the usable wattage for your equipment you need to multiply the rated value by 0.707 - a good reason for using the equipment calculator!

You don't say what type of laser you have - I found that a 2000VA UPS works fine for my 60W jobbie. Most of the time the UPS is just ticking over, but high speed full power rastering pushes it near to the max.

A UPS is a big fire risk (all that stored energy) so think about where it will be sited - access to turn off the mains input and to get near with a fire extinguisher.
(This is NOT something that the UPS manufacturers warn you about, but I have had personal experience!)

[Craig Matheny]

Contact APC directly tell them what you have they have different units based on your needs for our embroidery machines the motors use a different sine wave it is square not smooth like an S then regular motors put the wrong unit and it will keep the power clean but set to a standard wave. My understanding is stepper motors use different wave lenghts.