Consequence of shorting two pins on a Driver Board while adjusting

?????
Small spark was seen

Just happened to me twice today. I need to start using a plastic screw driver to adjust the vrefs

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/01/2015 05:51PM by XYZM.

I know for sure it damages the driver board(my first incident)... but does it cause damage to the actual board?

The 2nd time it happened it was with the a ground pin so I got lucky, because the driver board still worked.

That's one of the problems with those little plug-in driver boards. It's easy to kill them by shorting out traces with a screwdriver when trying to adjust the pot, and it's really easy to break the pot. It's best to keep a few spares handy- they're cheap enough.

If you ever get tired of dealing with those problems, check out the Smoothieboard. Among its many nice features are digitally controlled motor currents- you specify them in the config file and don't have to adjust any pots.

I have read about the smoothieboard, once I get more experience I will probably update.

For now I can't get anything to print. Motors move fine through manual control. But when heating the extruder and heatbed they studddddder. Geeetech thinks its power unit, so they will send me one. Im trying to make them send me another board too haha

Who is a good provider of the smoothieboard?

Another 32-bit board with software-controlled stepper motor current is the Duet. It's available at [www.think3dprint3d.com], [reprappro.com], and [www.replikeo.com]. It has probably the best firmware for controlling delta printers of any board at present, and also supports Cartesian and CoreXY designs.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

Uberclock sells them in the US.

I use a ceramic tipped diddlestick to adjust the pots. Meter ground is attached to circuit ground by fleaclips and the other probe tip rides the pot wiper.

I use to have a fiberglass small screwdriver for these kinds of things. One advantage to the fiberglass version is that it you damaged the end you could fix it again on a grinder.

I actually just made a tool from an old ipod opening tool, by using a grinder. Lesson learned haha