Recommended power supply insufficient for thermal receipt pr

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rileyjshaw
 
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Recommended power supply insufficient for thermal receipt pr

Post by rileyjshaw »

Hi! I recently purchased your Thermal Receipt Printer Guts" (https://www.adafruit.com/product/2753), along with the power supply you recommend in your tutorial (https://www.adafruit.com/product/276, from https://learn.adafruit.com/mini-thermal-receipt-printer). It isn't enough to power this thermal printer. I have two friends who just bought the same package, and they're experiencing the same problem. 5V is on the very bottom of the voltage range required for the device, and we can only get it printing consistently above 7V.

I contacted support and they recommended I make a post here. Are you able to look into this?

Best,
Riley

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nycucumber
 
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Re: Recommended power supply insufficient for thermal receip

Post by nycucumber »

hi! I ordered two of these printers and none of them are printing. I am also using the recommended power adapter. When I press and hold the roll paper button, it would roll a bit and stop right there. and I can hear the gears are cramping. I feel like it is caused by the power issue you mentioned. I am going to order a high voltage adapter and try again. hope it solves it.

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dlleigh
 
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Re: Recommended power supply insufficient for thermal receip

Post by dlleigh »

I'm not with Adafruit, so take what I say with that in mind.

It's interesting that the printer starts working at about 7V. These are supposed to work between 5V and 9V. The printer modules come in several different varieties, including some that are specified at 12V for automotive use. I'm wondering if you accidentally ended up with one of those. Did you purchase yours directly from Adafruit?

Could you post an image of the printer module showing its model number and serial number?

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adafruit2
 
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Re: Recommended power supply insufficient for thermal receip

Post by adafruit2 »

since there's multiple people, please all verify exactly what model printer you have and if its not printing at all, printing dim, stutering when feeding paper, etc!

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nycucumber
 
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Re: Recommended power supply insufficient for thermal receip

Post by nycucumber »

I purchased two Thermal Receipt Printer Guts from adafruit directly.

https://www.adafruit.com/product/2753

The adjustable voltage power supply I bought from Amazon just came, and it did fix the paper rolling problem. This proved the point: the recommended power supply is not enough.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078L ... UTF8&psc=1

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dlleigh
 
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Re: Recommended power supply insufficient for thermal receip

Post by dlleigh »

It would be useful to put one of the modules on a good bench supply to see what it really needs, and what happens when it doesn't get what it needs. I'm also wondering if the printer modules draw brief spikes of current that some power supplies are able to source, but others can't.

What voltage setting were you using on the Amazon power supply that you purchased?

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adafruit2
 
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Re: Recommended power supply insufficient for thermal receip

Post by adafruit2 »

good idea! - we went back to the printer specs and yeah, 5-9V is the power voltage range, 7.5V is their recommended 'middle' and 5v may be dim.

We've updated the product spec pace

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nycucumber
 
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Re: Recommended power supply insufficient for thermal receip

Post by nycucumber »

just for the record. i am using 7.5v and it works well.

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