Power Quality Explained
Discover how power quality and uptime impact your business.
The Two Big Source of Power Problems:
(Most People Only Blame the Power Grid)
The Power Company Gets all of the blame when the lights are out or dim, but that’s not the whole story…
The Power Grid
The Power Is Out!
The power goes out, the lights flicker or lightning strikes. Outages, sags and catastrophic surges represent 10% of system downtime, these pose a real and significant source of downtime for EnvisionTEC users. The outages are a visible manifestation of power problems and what most people think about.
10%
The User's Facility
The Machine Froze!
90% of electrical downtime comes from within the building. Power outages are infrequent compared to disturbances such as noise, spikes, and common-mode voltage. These transients are invisible but present to some degree all the time. For that reason, 3D printers need to be protected from them constantly, not just when the lights go out.
90%
Power Quality Issues are Like an Iceberg
The most visible symptoms represent a relatively small portion of the actual issue
Let's Dig Deeper on the 90%
These Power Problems are Everywhere
So if 90% of electrical downtime comes from within the building... where's it coming from?
That refrigerator on the other side of the wall from your brand new MS, that Nitrogen Generator down the hall, those are all causing problems within the buildings electrical infrastructure. Even dedicated circuits with isolated grounds often share the neutral; the National Electric Code allows it. Are you 100% sure that your new cryogenic freezer has the same ground site as the communication equipment it’s connected to? If not, you’ve got a ground loop.
So What's the Effect?
Downtime and Significant Expense
What are all of these issues from within the building doing to the equipment?
Communication and connectivity issues, lock ups, that blue screen of death, and eventually… catastrophic failure. High frequency transients have a way of causing many different problems that are most often never attributed to power. Software and hardware engineers get the blame but in reality, the quality was there when the product was shipped. It was the electricity powering the device that caused it.
What Is the Solution?
A Power Protection Solution with These 4 Things:
The power keeps flowing when the lights go out flicker or dim
High Power Transients (Lightning Strikes) are absorbed and dissipated
An electrical break is made between the incoming power and your device
Predictable impedance allows for noise filters that actually filter normal-mode noise
Power Quality
It’s our Job
We specialize in power quality solutions that ensure your equipment is protected throughout its entire lifecycle. Let’s talk about your situation and how we can help.
How do we Qualify our Partners?
We find, test and analyze the best power quality products on the market with our comprehensive 13 point evaluation process. We look at everything from common mode and normal mode noise to the manufacturing process of the suppliers. Identifying top performers in the power space allows us to provide value to our OEM partners.
Modern Technology
Connectivity and custom integrations are a high priority for our OEM partners. We bring the latest technologies in predictive analytics for precision diagnostics to our power quality product recommendations
True Power Quality
True power quality requires the integration of all of the important components above. Failing just one of our tests means a product cannot get a Voltonix stamp of apporval.
Deliverable Capabilities
Our product partners must be able to deliver the volume and quality that our OEM partners expect. We systematically evaluate and re-evaluate our product partners for QC and scaling capabilities.
