Probably fried my stepper driver. What did I do wrong?

Hello everyone,

So I’m new to this, and I’ve recently bought some stuff for a private pick and place machine.
In order to learn, I first wanted to try and control a single stepper motor and obviously did something wrong because when loading my script I first heard some kind of “click” and the driver started to smoke. I immediately unplugged the power supply and USB A cable. But first, here is a list of the components I used:
Arduino Mega 2560 R3, Ramps 1.4, DRV8825, Nema 17HS4023, an endstop switch from big tree tech and a 12V 5A power brick as a power supply.

I will walk you through the process of what I did and provide some pictures:

1) I connected the Arduino Mega with the Ramps board. I don’t think there is anything that can go wrong here because there is only one way to connect them. Then I plugged in all three jumpers for the x-portion of the board.




2) I plugged in the stepper driver regarding the pin descriptions on the Ramps and the driver itself and then plugged in the stepper motor and the endstop switch (even though I didn’t even aim to use it in my first script).



3) Then I connected the two 5A connectors on the ramps to an adapter for my psu.




4) Finally, I connected the Arduino to my PC and loaded the following script:

#define X_STEP_PIN 54
#define X_DIR_PIN 55
#define X_ENABLE_PIN 38
#define X_MIN_PIN 3
#define X_MAX_PIN 2

#define Y_STEP_PIN 60
#define Y_DIR_PIN 61
#define Y_ENABLE_PIN 56
#define Y_MIN_PIN 14
#define Y_MAX_PIN 15

#define Z_STEP_PIN 46
#define Z_DIR_PIN 48
#define Z_ENABLE_PIN 62
#define Z_MIN_PIN 18
#define Z_MAX_PIN 19

#define E_STEP_PIN 26
#define E_DIR_PIN 28
#define E_ENABLE_PIN 24

#define Q_STEP_PIN 36
#define Q_DIR_PIN 34
#define Q_ENABLE_PIN 30

#define SDPOWER -1
#define SDSS 53
#define LED_PIN 13

#define FAN_PIN 9

#define PS_ON_PIN 12
#define KILL_PIN -1

#define HEATER_0_PIN 10
#define HEATER_1_PIN 8
#define TEMP_0_PIN 13 // ANALOG NUMBERING
#define TEMP_1_PIN 14 // ANALOG NUMBERING

void setup() {
pinMode(FAN_PIN, OUTPUT);
pinMode(HEATER_0_PIN, OUTPUT);
pinMode(HEATER_1_PIN, OUTPUT);
pinMode(LED_PIN, OUTPUT);

pinMode(X_STEP_PIN, OUTPUT);
pinMode(X_DIR_PIN, OUTPUT);
pinMode(X_ENABLE_PIN, OUTPUT);

pinMode(Y_STEP_PIN, OUTPUT);
pinMode(Y_DIR_PIN, OUTPUT);
pinMode(Y_ENABLE_PIN, OUTPUT);

pinMode(Z_STEP_PIN, OUTPUT);
pinMode(Z_DIR_PIN, OUTPUT);
pinMode(Z_ENABLE_PIN, OUTPUT);

pinMode(E_STEP_PIN, OUTPUT);
pinMode(E_DIR_PIN, OUTPUT);
pinMode(E_ENABLE_PIN, OUTPUT);

pinMode(Q_STEP_PIN, OUTPUT);
pinMode(Q_DIR_PIN, OUTPUT);
pinMode(Q_ENABLE_PIN, OUTPUT);

digitalWrite(X_ENABLE_PIN, LOW);
}

void loop () {
digitalWrite(X_DIR_PIN, HIGH);
for(int x = 0; x<200; x++) {
digitalWrite(X_STEP_PIN, HIGH);
delayMicroseconds(500);
digitalWrite(X_STEP_PIN, LOW);
delayMicroseconds(500);
}
delay(1000);
}


Up to this point, I’m not sure if I damaged only the driver or even more. I only saw smoke coming from the driver and after unplugging it and removing the heatsink it looked like it was damaged:



I hope my description was clear enough to follow my process.
Can anyone tell me, by chance, what I did wrong and what I need to do to prevent this?

Kind regards
bt_Tama

... first, check the orientation of the driver - they can easily be inserted the wrong way round, then => "magic smoke"

Too much current set, too ... or a short somewhere ...

---

Viktor
--------
Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

Hey Viktor, thanks for helping.

I'm pretty sure that the driver is oriented the right way, at least according to the pin description next to each pin (maybe it wasn't at the time it happened, though...?). I also checked this page here.

Well, I connected a 12V 5A PSU to the 5A pins on the board (didn't connect anything to the 11A pins). I thought that the board will only draw as much current as it needs to drive the motor which should be 1A. I'll be checking for shorts tomorrow.

Thanks again.

So what I found while checking for shorts is that in continuity mode when putting one probe to the plus and the other probe to the minus connector of the 5A channel, I do get a very short beep from my multimeter (just a fraction of a second). Maybe the D2 diode is shorted? But then my question is: Why isn't it beeping continuously?

... this "short beep" is normally the "loading cycle" of a capacitor - should repeat, if you switch the connection of your multimeter or short the pins and repeat ...

---

Viktor
--------
Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

Oh, you're right. This proofs that you'll learn something new even after a failure.

The question still remains. What did I do wrong? Maybe the orientation of the driver was wrong, as you already said. Or maybe my PSU connection was switched. I'm pretty sure that I did everything exactly as I recreated in the pictures above, though. And as far as I can tell, everything is connected the right way. Currently, I'm too afraid to repeat the process just to sacrifice a second driver.

So I think I found the error. I did not adjust the potentiometer on my drivers. The ref voltage was set to 1.6V. After setting it to 0.45V, everything is working.

... so it was the "Too much current set" hint -- glad you found it!

---

Viktor
--------
Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]