I responded last night, but apparently didn’t hit reply. Anyway, Here are some pictures.
I should’ve added that the solder joint I circled is for the plug next to the LCD displays and doesn’t have anything plugged in, so I don’t see how that could be the issue. I really think it’s the cpu based on the way it’s heating up so fast.
From the pictures I found online, it appears that those five circles are supposed to be yellow, not silver, so perhaps solder has melted and flowed through the board. I think the opposite side is the yellow rectangle that contains a voltage regulator U3. Is this area also getting hot? Does this get hot faster than the CPU? This might be the main issue and the CPU getting hot could be a consequence.
In the end it might not matter, the board is dead, but to me it seems more plausible that shorting the wrong endstop pins would damage the regulator and not primarily the CPU.
I’m not surprised when electronics let go of their magic smoke. But I am surprised when they work fine (the lcd is working), but not completely working (getting hot/not moving).
I assume those pads are test spots or they are for an ISP to burn the bootloader. They are used during testing or initial setup. Not sure why any of them would have solder, but I would also be surprised things would look this normal if it managed to melt the solder itself.
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BTW, this id mostly just for curiosity. I’m not sure what we could do for whatever the problem was.
Does it heat up if you unplug everything but the power?
To answer both your replies. The board never actually smoked, just smelled acrid/hot all of the sudden. I let it cool and when it powered on and lcd looked ‘normal’ I thought it was going to be okay, but it wasn’t.
The board heats up regardless if stepper motor is plugged in or not. I just unplugged the LCD since I hadn’t tried that, but same result…CPU will burn you. I also unplugged the 15a fuse and the 5a motor fuse just out of curiosity…didn’t know how it would make a difference, but figured it couldn’t hurt anything. The CPU immediately heats up regardless.
I also went onto the Ardruino editor website and tried the ‘Blink’ example. That was rather interesting actually…it recognized the board was on com4. It said it was writing it to flash and the LED did blink a couple times, but the message I got was an not in sync error for a total of 10 retries before it timed out and said it wasn’t responding. I even changed the timer from 1000 to 100 just to dbl check it was actually the blink example that I was seeing and it blinked faster momentarily before not responding. While I was typing this response I plugged it back in and went back to Adruino editor and tried the blink command again and same error, but each time right before the ‘not in sync’ error the LED blinked. It did this a total of ten times, which is the number of attempts it made, so it’s kinda, sorta responding.
I’m not really sure why I keep plugging it in and messing with it at this point…99.9% sure I’m not going to be able to fix it. I’ve also taken some close-up photo’s and uploaded them to the computer and blown them up to see if there’s anything obvious, but it’s not like the old days where you could sometimes tell a resistor had burned up. Anyway, I’m just rambling at this point. It’s NFG(non functional goods) and a new one is on the way…hopefully I’ll have better luck with the new one.
Under the plastic of that CPU are usually a few parts. I’m guessing some of them are toast, while others are fine. It is just surprising that they can break so cleanly.
I received the new Rambo today. powered it up and am able to control the stepper motor. Also, board is not getting hot at all. So it looks like things are back on track.
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I picked up a coffee table last night and it should work well. It’s one of those tables you can put curios under the glass, so I’'ve already got a nice recessed area for my ‘sand’.
Right before starting this project I purchased a Creality Ender Pro3. I was able to print all the parts one time, but then the printer started acting up. I worked with the folks at Creality and that has been a PITA since day one, but I put up with it for the past few weeks. The LCD goes blank at various times and then stays blank for a day or two. Sometimes it does it when you first power it up, sometimes in the middle of a print. Initially it looked like it was just a screen issue, but I needed to print something so I hooked up the lcd from my ZenXY project. Unfortunately it’s blank too…indicating a much bigger problem. Again I started to work with Creality, but they keep asking me to diagnose more and more. I told them I wanted to return it for a refund…and I was within my 30day warranty period when I first reported the problem, but they refuse to let me to do that. I’ve invested several hours with them and it’s beyond frustrating. I know many people have had good luck with the printers, but there’s also alot of folks in similar situations as me. If you’re considering a 3D printer I’d recommend thinking twice before purchasing one from Creality.
Do you want to keep trying to fix it or are you fed up with it? What steps have you taken? Is it in the garage by chance, did it go out during our record breaking heat a few weeks ago?
Again I could’ve sworn I replied to this thread, but apparently not. That’s the second time I’ve supposively replied, but then cannot find it. Anyway, I finally got Creality to agree to give me a refund. I’m just waiting on the label to ship the printer back.
Regarding your question about where printer was. It was in my office and never in a garage.
Sometimes people reply to the emails, and those just go to the trash bin.
It’s alive. I was going to upload a quick video, but I didn’t realize you couldn’t. No matter, you’ve all seen the little silver ball move back and forth. Now that it works I’ll start cleaning up the wiring and building an enclosure to hide everything.
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Videos are a pain. I think posting them to youtube is probably still the best way for anyone to get there, they embed well here, and they stay high quality.
The other day when I did the belt routing I hadn’t hooked up or configured the endstop switches yet. I thought I’d be able to configure the endstops via the LCD, but after a bit of reading I realized I needed to use the Arduino editor. I’m using the Marlin-ZenXY_MiniRambo_16T firmware. I modified the bedsize in the Configuration.h file to 508mm, which is roughly my bed size. I made no other changes. Under the Endstop Settings it’s using XMIN_Plug and YMIN_Plug. Travel limits are set to min 0 and max bed_size. I saved the configuration to the board and hooked everything back up. I went to Motion/Home X and I expected it to move until it hit the limit switch since it doesn’t know where it currently is. Instead it moves a few mm and stops. Same for Y. How do I set Home?
Never mind…figured it out. Wiring issue and the movement I was seeing was the bounceback setting kicking in.
You can check them with M119. Very useful. I bet they are wired the opposite from the way the firmware expects.
