Hello
I am using series connection for my 5 stepper motors with arduino mega 2560 and ramps 1.4 and they worked fine when i connected them individually for each axis. Even they worked fine with endstops!!
But when i connected all five at once to the ramps board, smoke started coming out from the arduino board, lcd turned white with no contrast and led on the ramps started flickering when i connected it back after saving it the first time when the arduino fried.
Can someone point out the problem with using all steppers at once??
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A picture will help us, but the initial thought is that you didn’t mount the drivers the correct way?
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But mounting the drivers wrong will stop even a single motor from running. As i told u before all motors were functioning good individually but connecting them all at once caused the issue.
Could it be that my voltage regulator on arduino got fried?? I am powering the arduino with a 12 v external power supply.
Also i will post the picture soon when i get to work on the machine.
You put power to the green connector on Ramps board, not the Arduino itself.
I just figured as you tested 1 stepper at the time you might have flipped one testing them all - but it is more likely you power the system wrong.
https://docs.v1engineering.com/electronics/ramps/
Add 12V to the power port, and plug in the steppers. The Arduino barrel jack (the round plug) is not used.
Sorry for the misunderstanding.I am powering the ramps with the power supply and not the arduino.
Are you saying that among the X, Y and Z motors, flipping one among the three is the issue here?
Can you explain why is that a problem because flipping one of the motors will just make that motor to reverse the direction? Please elaborate.
There is no polarity protection for the drivers if it is reversed it will die. If the motor is plunged in backward it runs backward
Drivers = the postage-stamp sized boards that install on top of the RAMPS board.
Yes those are fragile it is possible to damage the mega and ramps.board too
Nothing fundamentally prevents ramps from driving all three axes at the same time. Especially if each axis works properly in isolation, they should work simultaneously.
What seems like the most likely are:
- Plugging or unplugging a motor while the stepper driver is energized can kill a motor driver and potentially fry other things.
- Moving an axis quickly can backfeed voltage into the system and fry things. I’ve personally fried two boards this way.
Replace some or all of the parts and try again. To be safe, replace all the electronics. You might get away with replacing the arduino and one or two drivers but if you aren’t 100% sure which parts are good and which are bad, you could fry more things and waste more time that way.
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If you want a stepper motor to go opposite direction you flip the connector 180 degrees. You do not flip the driver board around.
What stepper drivers do you have? DRV8825 or A4988 or anything else?
So I m using a DRV8825 stepper drivers.
I went to work on project today and found that among the Arduino and the ramp pair which amoled out, the ramps is working fine with another Arduino and I have also solved the lcd screen whitening problem by adjusting the contrast knob.
But what puzzles me though is that I am able to upload firmware on the fried Arduino but it doesn’t work with any of ramps boards that I have.
Probably the regulator is damaged. Should I power the only good Arduino that I am left with seperately from the usb so that I do not damage it also??
Attached is the photo of fried ramps board and Arduino pair and also a Arduino whose regulator I previously burned.
That voltage regulator seems done…if replacing it alone will help I have no clue.
I have many Arduinos that doesn’t work any more…mainly due to me connecting things up in a bad way.
Yep, regulator is toast. I think Ryan has them in the shop.
So that means there is a problem with voltage regulator of the arduino? Is is a correct conclusion or there might be some other thing i am overlooking?
Is there a way to save the voltage regulator or rather avoid using it?
If you are powering the Mega through 12V, you need the regulator or the ATMEGA chip will fry. You can replace the regulator - they cost less than a $2 but honestly, most of the places will charge you $5 to ship it and at that point, you may want to avoid all the hassle and just buy a new MEGA board off Amazon. I want to say a new mega board is around $15 shipped on Amazon (don’t quote me on that).
I’m using RAMPS and Arduion Mega too but I never saw this problem before. Maybe your voltage regulator was not able to absorb too much current from RAMPS. You may find the solution here because someone got the same problem as you and they mentioned that endstops caused the short circuit (broken endstop with 0 Ohms) and also pointed that removing the D1 diode from RAMPS could fix the fried regulator problem but you have to power your arduino from USB
(sorry if posting another site url is prohibited here)
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We used to have a lot of ramps controller die by having their regulator die. If you can still flash it, try powering the usb with a cheap phone charger. If the regulator died in a way that it is just open, that should be ok. I can imagine it died in a short, in which case, the 12V and 5V rails may be shorted 
.
You definitely can kill the 5V reg by shorting the (+) and (-) pins of an endstop. You can also just breathe on them. They are replacing the right parts with cheap knock offs to reach the $5 price point. This is why Ryan switched to the rambo. He used to charge like $60 for the ramps combo, which included flashing them, testing them, and refunding broken ones, but it still wasn’t worth it, considering how many were DOA or returned after some minor mistake.
Also, I see you have a resistor in the temperature pin. We don’t need that anymore, unless you are trying to do some swapping to an extruder.
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The picture posted by the user doesn’t show the 12V - (minus) connection in the right handed post of the 4 screw-terminal power connector. I am under the impression that the 2 right hand connections are the primary 12+/- feeds and the left handed feeds are only required if a heated bed is installed. Perhaps rewiring by supplying the 12- feed in the right hand connection would help.