Hello All,
I just built a RepRap Prusa i3 from a kit. I got everything built, everything wired up, double and triple checked all the wiring. I got the software all setup and everything seemed to be working fine(except the extruder motor, not sure what's up with that, but that's a topic for another day.) Motors moved in the right direction, they stopped at the endstops, it did everything I asked except push plastic through the hotend. So, since the extruder wasn't functioning properly, I let the fan run for a while and then shut everything down for the night to start up again the next evening.
The next day, I replaced the USB cable with a 4 ft. one of my own(a 1 ft. USB cable is next to useless...), and turned the table the printer was on around so that the bed was facing me. I tightened the screws holding the arduino and Ramps board on by hand so that it'd sit up straight(it's not a very good design...). When I plugged everything in, the arduino blew up... upon closer inpection, the usb cable was hot, L1(the inductor that's right beside the USB port) was completely blown up, and the diode that's attached to the reset pin on the usb controller is blackened. Now when I plug the arduino into my PC, it turns on, but the PC doesn't recognize the device.
My current suspicion is that one or more of the pins on the unused header next to the usb controller(next to JP5, I think it's the ICSP1 pins) came into contact with a pin or 2 on the RAMPs board that weren't trimmed short enough. I ordered a new Arduino Mega 2560, but I'd rather not plug it in and give it a try without a clearer idea about what caused the first one to blow up...
Any input on what might have happened would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Jon
