So I dropped a heat sink onto the stepper driver. The event caused the board and my laptop to shutdown. Now the stepper driver isn't working along with two others on the board. I'm using the megatronics 2.0 and Pololu A4988 drivers from sainsmart.

To be specific, I dropped the heat sink that came with the drivers onto the E0 driver. After I recovered from the shutdown, X and Z axis would not respond. I've replaced the two axis drivers with spares that I have, but I don't get how I could have blown up three drivers by dropping a heat sink. Any ideas as to what happened?

You most likely shorted 12v (stepper motor voltage) to places it was never meant to go destroying the IO port on the micro controller

You now need a new board. (or replace the atmega2560 cpu chip, if your good at SMD reflow work)

Dust,

The main board works. I was able to heat the hotend and control one axis at a time until I replaced two of the drivers. No, just the E0, X, and Z drivers were affected. I believe that you are right, though, that I sent 12v to something that can't handle it. Do you know if a schematic for the drivers exists?

Your lucky your board survived!

[www.pololu.com]

scroll down till you see the Schematic diagram

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/21/2016 03:31AM by Dust.