Complete crash and burn

So I was finishing up my design and g code was made.
Transferred to SD card and put the SD card into the slot. Unfortunately i missed the slot and the card fell inside the enclosure. Had to remove the back part of the enclosure to get the card. Used a screwdriver and must have hit something because now its dead. …

Screen not working - tried swapping wired, cleaning etc.
Disconnected ramps and Mega card. Connected mega card to PC, got an working LED.
Cant access the mega card, for some reason the PC does not recognize the arduino card.

So it seems to be a lost case.

Now Im all in for getting a new board. Should I continue with the Ramps 1.4 or should I upgrade or change to another board.

Is is possible to get the ramps card pre-configured so I dont have to mess around with flashing etc.?
Preferably in EU somewhere and with enclosure.
If elsewhere; need to have the option for express shipping.

Or should I try to save the old card, new configuration, flash etc? Never done it so how difficult is it?

Cheers

Ouch! Bad luck! You might try to troubleshoot and find the faulty components if you are up to it, people here are certainly helpful and knowledgable.

I don’t have an answer to your question, I guess it’s all up to you - your skills and motivation. Flashing a new board is not difficult - honestly - as long as you go for something that is prebuilt: https://docs.v1engineering.com/electronics/marlin-releases/ The SKRs and the Rambos are the most proven. Ramps seems a little more fragile (from what I’ve heard), so going for a rambo, or skr might be an improvement? (as long as you find some express shipping of course!)

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On your old board, the most likely culprit is the voltage regulator. Try plugging your board into a computer and see if it starts up. If it does, you can fix the board by adding an external power converter module to supply the 5V to the board. If USB power does not work, for $15 USD or so, you can replace just the Mega board. There is now a simple, no compile way to flash the Ramps/Rambo/MiniRambo boards. See my post in this topic.

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Check the small smd fuses on the board. Typically in a short situation these go before anything big. Get them at digikey.

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https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/littelfuse-inc/0448005-MR/1211090 these little guys, get a dozen to have on hand.

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Yep, I also vote for checking the fuses. Do you have a multimeter to check them with?

Now, in case you’re not sure what we’re talking about… if you have one of these kind, you’re in luck just check the red and blue fuses and replace if needed:

If you have one of these:

The fuses are the large yellow vertical square things

If you have something like this sitting in front of you:


This won’t be as easy to repair properly, but still quite doable with beginner-intermediate soldering skill. The 2 red circled parts are SMD fuses. If one is blown, you can solder a new one right on top of it without removing it first. Be sure it is blown first before doing this though, otherwise you will put fuses in parallel (thus doubling the rating).

In all cases, you would use your meter to measure resistance/continuity. Both fuses should measure as “closed” or just a few ohms resistance. If one is “open” or has significant resistance, it needs to be replaced.

The neat thing is if it’s just a fuse, you could just short the fuse out and get back to cutting today (of course, order a new one and replace it when it arrives for safety… and yeah, no “probing” inside with stuff while it’s powered up, lol :wink: ).

[edit: I suppose I can give my input on replacement options…

Right now, the skr and rambo boards supported by v1 are probably going to be the easiest to use software wise. That said, rambo is 8bit, and skr is not cheap. Also, there are some real shortcomings with marlin at the moment that you may run in to if you plan to operate a laser on it. It is possible v1 and mpcnc will move to grbl32 to fix this issue. A grbl32 board is also expensive, and the fw for grbl32 is still fairly immature compared to marlin (so ranks as “very difficult for beginners” right now). So for myself, I currently run ramps, intend to save money for now, wait for grbl32 to get on step (fingers crossed mpcnc embraces it fully), then upgrade my rig when it is more established. Thusly… for you maybe replacing ramps with ramps for now will save $ for grbl32 when it hits. Heck, even if the ramps died maybe your mega survived… then it would only cost a ramps.]

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