Moment of truth with the first power on. The last time I powered on for the first time my Melzi electronics exploded. Holding thumbs …
You could always check the wiring for continuity and shorts before applying power for the first time.
There would then be less chance of another explosion.
Double checked all the connections before switching it on. It still smoked. Looks like it fried again. I suspect the power supply is the issue. Will investigate but I think the Pangu i3 Prusa Kit has been defective from the start. What a waste on money.
That just sucks… First time is annoying/amusing afterwards… Second time is just rubbish…
Grab your DMM and make sure that the output of the PSU is what it says on the labels and what you expect it to be. (That you have a 12v, not a 24v PSU, for example)
@SJ_du_Preez
What exactly smoked? The power supply should be fused. Smoke generally means something shorting.
@paul_wallich it was smoking somewhere on the ramps. I got the board locally with the ramps already on the arduino. Think it was broken or incorrectly assembled.
hi! @SJ_du_Preez i noticed that you have not used heatsink on ramps, without them, the driver burn in a short time and probably smoke
@Alessandro_Barracane the heatsinks are not critical. They are there mostly for prolonged use to dissipate heat. if they were like PC CPU’s that burn out after 1 minute the setup would have been completely different with heatsink fan configurations.
Just use a fuse for the first start up or a power supply with current limitation. But a fuse is anyway cheaper than new electronics…you never no where the short cuts are hidden.
I checked the voltage and it was 12v. If I use a resister will I be able to test the current that way?
If the RAMPS emitted smoke there should be some evidence.
Look for discoloured components and check for smells of burning.
Failing that, use your DMM to check for shorts across the power rails on the RAMPS and Arduino (separately) to attempt to isolate which might be the cause.
#Hot
You can try a desktop PC PSU - somewhat cheap and readily available at most places. can you identify what was fried?
Also, you can do each connection step-by-step to try to identify whats wrong.
I would also try to inspect all the soldering (ramps, drivers, etc…). In my case I didn’t even started it with the polyfuses - I’ve replaced them and did some other mods but did inspect the chinese solder job (it was OK, though).