Newbie Issue - Wiring Motors with RAMPS 1.4

I am having the most weird issue with connecting the motors. I am building my first 3D printer - the Prusa i3. I got motors and cables that attach to the motor with other end open. And I have 4-pin connector cables with other end open. I connected the corresponding wires starting from one end one after the other (they did not match in color but I made sure they are connected in order) using the tiny red colored crimpers and crimping tool (wire cutter+crimper type).

Now it was time to test the motors with RAMPS 1.4 and Pololu boards. I made 5 of these cables. 4 of them did not work. Only one worked. I modified the test code to only run X axis, and I was able to run all of the motors (except the extruder motor actually - which is another issue in its own but I will ignore it for now) with that cable. None of the motors ran with the other cables. They just stuttered.

So I thought may be I did not crimp properly. I checked the continuity using the mutlimeter. All 4 of the failed cables checked out for the continuity on all the 4 individual wires. But to my surprise, the cable that worked actually failed continuity on two of the wires. But that's the one that works!!!!

Am I not connecting the wires properly? I am starting from the first wire on the motor side cable and connecting it to the first wire of the 4-pin connector side wire. And then second to second and so on.

I even tried to adjust the potentiometer on the Pololu board, but that did not make any difference.

Please help. It is really frustrating!

Thanks.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/21/2014 10:38PM by shah123.

A few links for you to check your work against:

How to wire a stepper motor: [www.automationtechnologiesinc.com]
Use a LED to identify wire pairs, (3 links): [www.youtube.com] [www.youtube.com] And [forums.reprap.org]
Tips for beginners: Stepper Motors, bipolar series gets up to speed faster than parallel [www.youtube.com]
Determining what wires to pair up on a stepper motor. Match coils for 8 wire stepper. [reprap.org]
Calibration of stepper motors [www.youtube.com]
How to measure Stepper Motor Voltage [forums.reprap.org]
POTs Calibration – RAMPS 1.4 [bootsindustries.com]

Wow! That's lots of information. I will go through it. Thank you A2.

Thank you so much. That resolved all the issues. I needed to make 1st and 3rd wires, and 2nd and 4th wires as the two pairs. This even solved the issue with the Extruder motor. The cable that it worked with was faulty - had one of the wires disconnected - and that's what helped it to work, probably running on one winding I guess.

Anyway, thanks a lot.