Hello,
It appears I’ve fried my Smoothieboard (5XC)…
Short version: I moved the motors by hand with everything powered up, sparks went flying and two stepper drivers fried. Plus, something else died along the way, as I can no longer power/connect to the board via USB…
Long version: So, I bought the Smoothie back in November when I was just starting to buy all the parts for my 3D printer. When it arrived, I’ve tested the board by plugging it to the computer via USB, installed Pronterface, checked out the config and that was it, as I had no other parts to do any “real” tests. Fast forward to yesterday, I had most of the mechanical stuff done, figured I’d check how everything works. Connected the 24V power supply, three motors and USB. Fired up Pronterface, connected to the printer and tried moving some axis - nothing moved. I’m not exactly sure what I was thinking at the moment, but I decided to try and move the axis by hand, maybe see if the motors are getting power, check out the holding torque or something… That’s when the two stepper drivers sparked and fried, additionally I can no longer power/connect to the board via USB… The VBB LED still works if that’s of any help… In retrospect, I realize I should have just disconnected everything when I couldn’t move anything, but damn, I never thought the stepper can generate enough power to fry stuff - I’ve seen people move Z axes of their CNCs by hand all the time…
Now, if it was only the drivers that failed, It wouldn’t be a big deal as I could still use external drivers… but something else died too - any idea what it was and is it fixable? I guess getting the board RMAd is not possible due to it being my fault? Picture of the fried driver over at imgur /N0cUqng
Imported from wikidot
Hey.
I’m really sorry to hear your board is dead … I can confirm after reading your story, it’s likely it’s not recoverable at all …
What happened to you is one of the only possible ways to kill the board ( along with disconnecting steppers with everything powered on ).
It’s very rare, but it does happen to a few persons.
There are many many reprap boards, and the only one that actively protects against this is the Rambo board. Smoothieboard v2 will have that protection too ( but it’ll mean a change in cost, like for Rambo ).
You *could* try replacing the microcontroller and voltage regulator … but I can’t guarantee it’ll save the board.
Cheers.
Well, I guess I could try replacing the microcontroller and whatever else that could be damaged - that would be cheaper than buying another 70-170$ board. But then again, soldering SMD components with THAT many pins might not be up my alley… Is there any way I could send the board to where I bought it (robotseed) for paid servicing/repair? Or to get a discount for another one? Eh, I’m pretty desperate here… such a stupid mistake…
Unfortunately, repairing the board pretty much costs more than the price of a new one at this point.
We are working on setting things up with a repair-shop locally, so this could change in the future, but not soon.
Alright, thanks for everything. I’ll see how it goes with repairing it myself. In the meantime, can you tell me more about what parts of the board can be damaged by this kind of incident? Is the voltage regulator you mentioned above, the same that is optional to install, to power the board from VBB input? (in which case it is non-existent here), or is there another one dropping the 5V usb power to 3.3V?
As for the smoothieboard v2, I guess you get asked this a dozen of times each day (sorry), but is there any ETA? Say, I could get by using a cheapo 8bit solution for a while, if smoothie is somewhat near release… Well, are you aiming for a 2016 release? Maybe even mid-2016?
Hey.
Several persons have fixed their board and talked about it on the forum recently, I think all the info you need can be found in those posts.
About v2, I wouldn’t wait for it, it’s still a long way away, even if we are making progress.
Cheers.