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UPS & Surge Protector

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What do you guys use to protect your cutter for electrical mishaps?

Is there a recommend minimum of joules protection for a cutter?

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Right now I have an Armstrong system.  Never heard of it?  It only requires me to unplug it during a storm...

In all seriousness, here is a link to some info that might help you out.  You may have to get by the ads to find what you want, but afaik the info is correct:

https://www.georgiapowermarketplace.com/pages/power-strips-buyers-guide

 

 

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I have the APC 750 watt battery back up on the design computer and one on the printer computer - others in the house and the plotter have surge suppressors only and almost all still get unplugged during heavy lightning.   20 years ago while I was at work my wife called me and said the house got hit by lightning and the family room lit up blue - I got permission to come home for a quick check and turned the breakers back on for what I could but even protected equipment got fried - was a $8000 claim - the in the well pump went out within 2 days from the hit.  now the back story - my dad had gotten me a really nice flag pole and it looked great on the corner of the house in the landscaping where I didn't have to mow around it.  it was 4-5 ft from the electric meter - we have aluminum siding and the flag was at the base of a downspout.  lesson learned and flag pole is still in the top of the pole barn :/   main lesson learned - if it is an indirect hit you may save some stuff with the protection but a direct hit nothing really was protected. - computer was unplugged but got fried thru the phone line that was still attached (any remember modems )

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22 hours ago, Dakotagrafx said:

I have the APC 750 watt battery back up on the design computer and one on the printer computer - others in the house and the plotter have surge suppressors only and almost all still get unplugged during heavy lightning.   20 years ago while I was at work my wife called me and said the house got hit by lightning and the family room lit up blue - I got permission to come home for a quick check and turned the breakers back on for what I could but even protected equipment got fried - was a $8000 claim - the in the well pump went out within 2 days from the hit.  now the back story - my dad had gotten me a really nice flag pole and it looked great on the corner of the house in the landscaping where I didn't have to mow around it.  it was 4-5 ft from the electric meter - we have aluminum siding and the flag was at the base of a downspout.  lesson learned and flag pole is still in the top of the pole barn :/   main lesson learned - if it is an indirect hit you may save some stuff with the protection but a direct hit nothing really was protected. - computer was unplugged but got fried thru the phone line that was still attached (any remember modems )

WOW!  :o

Now I'm worrying about the aluminum shingle roof we have, you know ... since we're tied directly to the above ground utility pole (that's not more than 25-ft from my home office) - include major electrical when we moved here and I had the electrician outfit my house with a ridiculous amount of outlets and breakers.

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I wondered if people used these or not, I need one but so far i just unplug mine when there is a storm. I have a smaller one on my PC mainly so if power goes out the pc just doesn't shut off. i have time to shut down properly if it doesn't come right back on. having the cutter cut off during a big cut would stink

 

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The UPS can save you a lot of headache and cost even when it's not storming.  You'll be amazed at how often you'll hear one click on and not even notice a change in your office lights.  They will smooth out a lot of the little hiccups and stray voltage that happen all the time on the power grid.  At our last house we lost nearly everything that plugs in over a 5 month time span.  Turns out the power company had a transformer nearly a mile away going bad and causing an unnoticeable brownout.  Power strips didn't save anything because it was never severe enough, but everything on a  UPS lived.

Now imagine you're cutting a large graphic or using some high-dollar vinyl and the power flickers.  If it's enough to reset the clock on the microwave, it will stop your cutter.  You've just lost a lot of time and money.

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4 hours ago, ShaneGreen said:

The UPS can save you a lot of headache and cost even when it's not storming.  You'll be amazed at how often you'll hear one click on and not even notice a change in your office lights.  They will smooth out a lot of the little hiccups and stray voltage that happen all the time on the power grid.  At our last house we lost nearly everything that plugs in over a 5 month time span.  Turns out the power company had a transformer nearly a mile away going bad and causing an unnoticeable brownout.  Power strips didn't save anything because it was never severe enough, but everything on a  UPS lived.

Now imagine you're cutting a large graphic or using some high-dollar vinyl and the power flickers.  If it's enough to reset the clock on the microwave, it will stop your cutter.  You've just lost a lot of time and money.

That being said, do you have a preferential "go to" brand and/or model? How heavy duty is it?

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APC has been pretty good.  They have replaceable batteries, which is really handy because like any battery, they will degrade over time and use.  Right now we have two ES-750 in the office. Mine handles a computer, two large monitors and my cutter. My wife's has a computer, two monitors and the printer attached.  They give us enough power to finish up what we were doing and then safely shut things down in a power outage.

The specs say they will run "full load" for up to 3.5 minutes.   But I try to buy them about twice as big as I need and you seldom are running full-load anyway.   They have a nice little program to help you select the size on their website: http://www.apc.com/us/en/tools/ups_selector/home/device

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If you're getting a UPS to level out voltage levels be sure to check the spec. on the unit. Some units simply pass the power through till there is a power loss then they switch over to battery where as other units you are technically running off battery all the time which is what levels out your line voltage, and others have some caps to level the line voltage for both the battery backups outlets as well as non backup outlets.

I believe most APC units do voltage leveling on all outlets.

Also check the specs on how the AC voltage is being generated and if your equipment can handle it. Some use transformers and give you true AC voltage where others use step switches which simulates AC but some electronics don't like it and will burn out over time, or not work at all.

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APC here too - tried a couple of cyberpower over the years but they didn't last as long and both of them over time started acting up with false positives other problems causing annoying beeps .  like darcshadow said the apc batteries can be bought at our local interstate dealer and are like the ones in emergency lighting found in most commercial buildings 

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