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IndustryArena Forum > CNC Electronics > Stepper Motors / Drives > Check for dead stepper (or: dead driver; stepper-/input-related?)
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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Feb 2013
    Posts
    15

    Check for dead stepper (or: dead driver; stepper-/input-related?)

    I just fried one of the stepper drivers on my cheap T6560-based driver board. I've been trying to get my BeagleBoneBlack set up to run my mill, using a Xylotex DB25 breakout board. It turns out that said board dedicates pin 1 to enable the level shifters, while my mill needs it to be X step. So I cut the trace and shorted pin 17 to pin 1.

    That didn't work. Possible problem 1: Pin 17 is an output on my stepper driver board, so trying to drive it may have hurt something. I didn't see/hear any problems while testing, however, and I believe (though I haven't confirmed) that said pin was being driven previously.

    My Y and Z axes work fine; so to see if my X axis is working, I plugged it into the Y axis connectors. I powered everything up and tried to jog the axis, and it moved really slowly and groaned quite a bit. Not at all what I would expect. After a couple seconds of this, I hear a pop and get that magic blue smoke out of the Y axis driver (which the X axis was plugged into; all other axes were unplugged). It turns out the bottom had blown off of the chip, so it's pretty dead.

    The Y axis was working entirely fine (smooth stepping, moving at the expected speed) immediately before I attempted to plug in the X axis to that driver.


    So here's my question... any idea what's wrong? Just bad timing on the driver dying, completely unrelated to my other testing? Something due to the aforementioned potential abuse? Is it even possible to do that kind of damage with bad inputs?

    I just checked my stepper's coils, and all of them are ~4Ω, so I guess none of them are open-circuited, at least. I don't see (via my ohmmeter) any shorts between the coils either, so I guess it's OK, unless there's something else I could have done to kill it.

    I can go try hooking it up to the Z axis driver, I suppose. Since I'm going to have to replace the board (might as well get something higher-quality- I'm not going to replace the driver on a low-quality board), I'd rather not kill the new one if the issue is somehow my stepper or inputs.

    Thanks!

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Posts
    146

    Re: Check for dead stepper (or: dead driver; stepper-/input-related?)

    When I had a problem with the BOB I made a three wire cable to run from the parallel port to the stepper driver to eliminate the BOB as the problem. Could be you wrecked the parallel port. I would not think you trashed the stepper or the driver. but maybe a dead short across two pins would knock out the port

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Feb 2013
    Posts
    15

    Re: Check for dead stepper (or: dead driver; stepper-/input-related?)

    No, it's definitely the driver. Good note on the parallel port, though- that seems like it could be an incredibly painful problem to track down.

    For what it's worth, I got some Gecko drives to replace the exploded one (plus the unexploded ones on the same board). The parallel port and steppers seem fine (no shorts on the stepper, and the parallel port seems to still function).

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Posts
    146

    Re: Check for dead stepper (or: dead driver; stepper-/input-related?)

    Glad to hear you have it sorted out. Good choice on the Geckos

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