Hi reprap people,
about a year ago, I bought this nice plaything: [
www.macher-3d.de]
It's a plexiglass prusa i3 with a MKS Base 1.2 board. (almost identical to [
reprap.org])
It was working well enough through 3 spools of PLA and ABS, but recently started to produce filament starved regions: small underextruded spots first, then 1-2 underextruded layers in more-or-less regular spacing and finallly only the smallest amount of filament made it out. Hand-feeding the filament, it came out of the nozzle well and I could even print some layers while constantly pushing the filament into the extruder. While troubleshooting this, I realized the stepper drivers were getting quite hot to the touch, so I added an old 80 mm computer fan blowing on the board. Apparently to late, because now the extruder doesn't do anything anymore. The stepper motor is fine, I can make it turn if if I hook it up to the X axis port and give movement commands via repetierhost, and the x-axis motor also does not work when connected to the extruder port.
So my questions:
Am I right and this is probably a burnt stepper driver? What else should I check? I have a simple multi meter but no oscilloscope.
The board uses SMD A4982 drivers soldered directly to the PCB. There are ports and some electronics for a second extruder, but the driver chip is missing and I most likely can't solder SMDs well enough to put one in without ruining the rest of the board. (otherwise I would have just switched over to that one)
What's a solid and cheap replacement board? I don't mind some DIY, but SMD soldering is above my abilities.
Is it worth getting one of the boards with break outs for stepper driver modules for easier replacement? Is it common for them to die?
