I was reading this post “so-i-fried-my-smoothieboard”, and was wondering how one could avoid a situation where the motor acts as a generator back to the board, causing it to break. I have had other boards were moving the motors was not an issues even when they were turned on; was this just a freak accident or is it something that happens often? Also could it be avoided by placing a diode in series with the stepper driver, or would that stop it from turning in both directions? I have read the warnings and it does not appear to be discussed there, are there any other common ways of blowing the board that I should be aware of before setting it up?
Feedback from the motors to the drivers is the most likely way of killing the drivers, but it’s not a common occurence : plenty of folks make the mistake but suffer no consequences. But a few folks kill their drivers.
For a way to protect against this, look at what the rambo board does ( which I believe requires 4 or 8 diodes ).
Appart from this, the only thing you really need to watch for is “connected the wrong thing into that connector”, and reversed polarity. That’s pretty much it.
Greetings! As I write this I am waiting for the mailman to deliver my new Smoothieboard. It is for a delta printer I recently completed, with which I have had problems. Up to now I was using (or trying to use) an Azteeg X5 mini v2. The first board died one hour into its second print. It seems the stepper driver for the extruder got fried somehow. Roy replaced the board but the exact same thing happened to the new board…one hour into the second print the extruder motor quit. I cannot in good conscience ask Roy to replace the board since the odds of having two boards with the same flaw are long. Plus, I’ve asked for guidance on determining the problem and have had no response.
Based on this thread, is it possible that my stepper motor is the problem? The wiring appears to be ok, but I’ll confirm continuity before I move forward. To be safe I ordered a new stepper motor which won’t arrive for a couple of days.
Can anyone suggest other reasons for the board to fail, or is it likely to be the stepper motor? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Ok so : boards failures are extremely rare. The same exact failure happening to two different boards, is extremely unlikely to just be “bad luck”.
Extremely likely there is something wrong with your motor, motor cable, or motor connector, causing intermittent disconnections, which kill the driver.
*Please* Change the motor, cable and connector, before trying the Smoothieboard in the machine.