12v hotend on a 24v VIN
-
Hello wonderful people.
I am build a printer with a duet 6HC mainboard.
If I supply 24v to the mainboard is there a setting I can change in config to allow the hotend output to be 12v.
OR do I have to use a step-down converter? -
a new 24v heater cartridge is cheaper than a step down converter.
is there a special reason why you want to keep the heater catridge?
-
No.
The fan outputs can provide 12v, but they can't provide enough power to drive a heater.
It is possible to drive the 12v heater with 24v, however it will draw a lot more power (and if you don't know what you are doing, you can quickly melt wires and connectors).
As an example, a 12v 40W heater is really just a heater with a resistance of 3.6 ohms.
There's no reason you can't power it with 24v. BUT! That same heater will be 160W. And drawing over 6A.
That's more than the rated output for the normal heater outputs of your board.
You could use the high current heater output (but then you wouldn't have anywhere to connect a heated bed).
I would expect you would also have issues as normal hot-ends don't need that kind of power, so you'll have trouble getting the temperature to be stable (it will heat up waaaaaay too fast).as @Veti says, much cheaper to get the correct cartridge heater.