Printer and power inverters?

Considering y ou can buy a printer/scanner for $40.

 

I use a brother 2270 and a cobra 1500 inverter. The first inverter I had gave me some trouble, I had to run the truck or APU or the printer wouldn't make it through the warm up or just crap out after a few pages. Replaced the inverter and now it works fine without needing to run anything.

Prime runs cobra inverters in their trucks. Maybe you could ask a driver to let you try it out and see if it works.

 

It is possible that your inverter is not working properly. It may run small loads just fine, but something that puts a heavy load on it kills the output. Could be that the laser control board does not like the modified sine power. It may need a cleaner power signal to sync.

 

Laser. That printer pulls 546 watts while printing and laser is finicky to signal noise (measured in dB.) In the case some devices (and likely that laser printer) it will give fits unless you are using a pure sine wave inverter. And in some cases even another of the SAME inverter will cause more inherent noise than the next because of manufacturing variations. Your microwave = not as finicky to signal power noise as laser.

 

Was not sure what the static charge and fuser would pull. granted for only a short burst, but could be a strong draw.

was thinking that a dirty signal was more likely the cause of problem. Laser diode and spliter plus focus prism need to be in sync, that would need a better quality sine wave to work.

 

I have seen a few drivers in my shop with lasers, but those draw a lot more power than an inkjet. So usually they are folks with stable APU type of power setups in conjunction with AC units, refrigerators, microwaves, etc. But the only way to know for sure is by swapping pieces. You say that your printer has no problem when plugged into wall power. So that still points to the inverter power source as not being what that model laser printer wants in some way. Realistically most devices will run fine on a less-expensive modified sine wave inverter. But I have seen some gaming system issues, some laser printers, etc that just did not dig modified sine wave regardless of how many watts it put out. In the military we called it the PFM factor (you'll have to figure out those initials, but the last one is "magic.")

With black & white (or even color) inkjets being $40 - $90 just about everywhere now, and being that they draw only 15-50 watts, buying a more expensive inverter just for a printer does not seem logical unless you are doing some kind of high-end printing out there. It is possible that the one Cobra off the shelf that you happen to have gotten is producing dirtier power than usual. But again, how much do you want to futz with it? Are you just printing B&W logs and invoices and such? And only a few sheets per day? Or are you doing some kind of high-volume printing where laser does have the advantage...

 

Agreed. Laser is great for high-volume printing but definitely requires more stringent power forms in most cases. And surely uses a lot of extra watts in a truck situation where you are trying to maximize your very limited power budget.