Frying stepper drivers

I'm having a crazy issue. My machine was up and running just fine a week ago. I moved it to a different room, and now it's going terribly. When I powered on the machine, the LCD lit, but wouldn't work. Ended up figuring out that the extruder stepper driver was fried, because the machine powers on fine without it installed. I ordered a new driver, installed it, and the same thing happened! So there must be some problem with my board, but I have no idea what. Any ideas?

You may risk burning out another driver but i would try plugging the extruder motor into X,Y or Zs connector and see if the motor is the issue. If the motor is the problem check the wires. If it works it could be the RAMPS board has a fault. If it is or could be the RAMPS I would change the pins.h file so it uses the second extruder as the first by swapping the pin numbers.

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The board still shorts even when I don't have the motor plugged in, so I'm guessing it's RAMPS?

Did you have the power disconnected when you swapped the driver? They are really sensitive and will burn out if connected/disconnected while the power is connected. Can you try the second extruder location on the RAMPS board? If you plug in the driver backwards or one hole off it fries them too.

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Power is off every time. I've it in the same direction as the x,y and z drivers. I'll try a good driver in E2

I've disconnected everything except for the thermistor, LCD and encoder. I've installed a single known good stepper driver in E1. In pins.h, under MOTHERBOARD==33 I've swapped the 3 E0 pins with the E1 pins. Good to power on? Should I try it with or without the motor the first time?

I would try with a known good motor X or Y or Z first and then try with the extruder.

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Hooked up the Y motor. Heated and "extruded". Got movement on Y! Powered down, swapped to extruder motor on E1. Heated and extruded. Must be an issue with E0 on my ramps board.

Thanks so much for your help. I'm excited to get this thing back up and running. I have been getting it calibrated, and it is looking fantastic. You really designed a great printer. Faster printing and at least as accurate as my Prusa i3.

Glad to hear it worked. Please keep us informed with your printing successes.

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If you need the firmware changes to make E1 work when E0 should I just did this last night for an expirement so let me know. it might be a good work around if your board is faulty.

Ok. This is getting bizarre. I did a couple prints the other day. I then powered off the machine, didn't move it at all. I powered on the machine today, and the X axis seems busted. The driver isn't shorting out the board, but it's not moving my motor, and even adjusting the potentiometer doesn't make it move. Should I be talking to the Ramps supplier?

I think I would contact them.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/09/2014 06:18PM by Sublime.

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Unfortunately, I think I know the problem. I just read the entire page on Ramps 1.4 on the wiki. It said that the diode under the X and Y steppers must only be populated if the board is being driven by 12V. I've been using 15V this whole time and that diode is there. What are the odds that I've been doing this damage?

Every machine I have ever sold/built has the diode installed and run 15v. The only thing it could damage is the Arduino. A real or well built Arduino has a voltage regulator rated to 19v but it is suggested to not go above 12v. The only person that has ever reported burning out the regulator was using an Arduino clone that had an underrated regulator (and WWFP also burnt out his running it at 19v). The Pololu drivers are rated to 35v and would not be effected. Everything else on the RAMPS runs off the 5v supplied by the Arduino regulator.

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Yeah I have been through a lot of stepper drivers, mainly because I forget to plug the steppers back in correctly (stupid I know). I need a pololu dispenser on my garage wall......

But I have had three die due to dry joints, most likely because I run in the garage which is a bit humid and force air cool the ramps/stepper drivers. Plus the heat from running on 19V is probably not helping also.

One was a solder joint on the stepper driver. (I did it with leaded solder, but it was right in front of a fan).
One I could not track down down the joint that failed on the stepper motor. May have been a dead chip, but occurred around the same time as the one above.
One was cause by a joint on the EO stepper socket on the ramps. Had to move to the E1 slot.

Also I had a dry joint on the screw connector solder joint for the hot end on the ramps. The high current wound up burning the joint out.

Only thing I can think to solve this is to get a new ramps and conformal coat it, however the Audrino has not had a problem so maybe it is just poor soldering. I have to get a new ramps soon, so I might give it a go.

I got a new RAMPS, so this weekend I'll be hooking everything back up again. I'll report back once it has worked for awhile or failed again.

That ramps was DOA, so I left things be for awhile. The other day, I decided to hook a few things up and try them. I've been thinking that my power setup could be the blame. Sure enough, I did some testing with my power jack, and I'm getting shorts when I insert the plug. So I'm going to go plugless for now and just wire the power straight into RAMPS. I tested all my steppers, and they're working.

I've rewired everything, and It seems like it's working ok, except that my LCD won't light when I'm on my 15V. When I plug in the usb, it lights just fine. Could I have a blown fuse/Mosfet? I'm nervous to try and print when I have such an electrical anomaly.

There is a diode that is supposed to supply the Arduino with voltage which the arduino regulates to 5v [reprap.org] . If the diode is missing it will not get voltage and the logic side of the electronics will not get power. Note that the wiki says only install it if using 12v. This is true if you have an Arduino with a cheap regulator. The Arduino specs are to have a 19v regulator which can handle the 15v without overheating. But some cheaper Arduino clones use a regulator that overheats and dies at 15v. There has only been one reported Arduino die on a Tantillus from the 15v and it was some Arduino clone with a slightly different name. As far as I know there is only one way to find out and that is connecting it and seeing if it dies. The alternate solution is to buy a regulator and power the arduino using it [cgi.ebay.ca] through the Arduino power jack.

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This totally makes sense now! I feel a lot better. I had desoldered that very diode to see if it was causing any of my issues. Now that I've found the short, I'll put it back!