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Post by travistrue on Mar 6, 2016 2:30:23 GMT
At first, my Azteeg wouldn't power on when turning the PSU on. I nudged the +voltage wire from the PSU to the Azteeg thinking that the wiring could be off, and I guessed right. It immediately started crackling, and just started smoking. I turned it off immediately, and now I'm opening up doors and windows so my kitchen doesn't smell like burnt electronics... I'm going to assume that I messed something up BIG TIME. Any ideas of what happened?
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Post by 3DprintedLife on Mar 6, 2016 2:54:46 GMT
Fun stuff! Probably had a loose wire strand in the header block on the azteeg, and nudging it caused it to short (or possibly separate a short which would explain why nothing worked and it sparked when you moved it). You may be safe since the PSU should protect against shorts, so I would double check that wiring and make sure it is correct and no wire strands are out of place then try it again!
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Post by travistrue on Mar 6, 2016 5:51:40 GMT
Then I really messed up. The stranded wires to the PSU were too thick to push into the block, so I cut some of them to thin the wires out. It was weird because I didn't have a problem getting the thick gauge of stranded wire into my friend's Azteeg for his build, but mine wasn't so smooth. At any rate, does this mean my board is toast?
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Post by 3DprintedLife on Mar 6, 2016 14:52:34 GMT
Then I really messed up. The stranded wires to the PSU were too thick to push into the block, so I cut some of them to thin the wires out. It was weird because I didn't have a problem getting the thick gauge of stranded wire into my friend's Azteeg for his build, but mine wasn't so smooth. At any rate, does this mean my board is toast? Not sure. If it did short, that would mean nothing went through the Azteeg and the PSU should have protection against shorts. That would mean everything should be fine once you get the wiring sorted out. It could also be a stepper driver frying (if one of the cables to a stepper motor was loose) in which case then the board would be dead..I wouldn't give up hope yet just be careful proceeding from here. The board and PSU both have some protective measures, but there's still a potential for sparks if things are messed up bad enough! |
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Post by travistrue on Mar 6, 2016 17:38:51 GMT
If my board is bad, could my stepper motors, endstops, hot end, heated bed, etc also be affected? I'm going to take a trip to Fry's Electronics here in town to pick up longer stranded wire. Would you recommend sticking with the same gauge, or should I drop down somewhat?
UPDATE: I unhooked everything from the Azteeg, including the PSU, and changed the power jumper back to USB power. I plugged just the Azteeg into my Mac, and Simplify3D was able to pick it up. It was able to read the firmware and config.txt off of the SD card this time around. That said, things are looking up for there, it's not like I can test the stepper motors without the Azteeg being hooked up to the PSU. On top of that, Simplify3D's reporting 240C and 236C for my hot end and heated bed with no thermistors connected. I hooked the hot end's power and thermistor up to the Azteeg (still running on USB power), and I'm still getting a reading of 240C, but my hot end isn't hot.
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Post by animoose on Jul 18, 2016 22:51:04 GMT
I had the same problem with stray strands of wires. I think just one strand bridged across the wires at the connector block, as there was a brief white glow after which the board worked. Presumably the strand had just vaporized. It was enough to worry me, and so instead I tried attaching a small blade crimp to each wire. This also turned out to be a bad idea, as I noticed this weekend (after about 2 weeks of using the printer this way) that the + wire was blackened at the crimp, and when the printer was running the screw connector block was hot. I'm suspect I hadn't crimped the blade on very well, as I only have a super cheap crimping tool. It was a hacky way of doing it anyway. So now I am back to using wires without crimps.
The whole thing makes me uncomfortable. The screw connectors are only just big enough for the 14AWG wires. I emailed Panucatt to suggest they might change this part of the design, though with no response so far. I am considering using bootlace ferrules and getting my hands on a proper crimper in future.
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Post by rock75 on Jul 19, 2016 4:16:48 GMT
I had the same problem with stray strands of wires. I think just one strand bridged across the wires at the connector block, as there was a brief white glow after which the board worked. Presumably the strand had just vaporized. It was enough to worry me, and so instead I tried attaching a small blade crimp to each wire. This also turned out to be a bad idea, as I noticed this weekend (after about 2 weeks of using the printer this way) that the + wire was blackened at the crimp, and when the printer was running the screw connector block was hot. I'm suspect I hadn't crimped the blade on very well, as I only have a super cheap crimping tool. It was a hacky way of doing it anyway. So now I am back to using wires without crimps. The whole thing makes me uncomfortable. The screw connectors are only just big enough for the 14AWG wires. I emailed Panucatt to suggest they might change this part of the design, though with no response so far. I am considering using bootlace ferrules and getting my hands on a proper crimper in future. i was concerned about stray wires as well being that the screw terminal is so tight. This may not be the best or recommended way to address this, but I soldered the end of my wires to ensure there were no strays poking out. This has been working fine for months with no problems. I did read somewhere why this was not a good idea (can't remember where right now), but I will try and find that post and share. I think it was something to do with the solder breaking down over time. I will eventually redo mine but for now it is working this way. |
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Post by animoose on Jul 19, 2016 15:13:43 GMT
The thread here (http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?1,650379) talks about the risks of tinning the ends of the wires. I did it this way on my old printer with no problems. I think I'll have a look into using ferrules.
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Post by scottadams on Jul 21, 2016 21:53:14 GMT
In case that link dies in the future, the gist is that tinning the wires creates a risk where "creep" or squishiness of the solder can cause it to physically loosen over time, or it concentrates all the current into one spot if you don't have a perfectly round solder job (which is essentially impossible to do). Concentrating the current into one tiny spot is the same as using a single tiny wire and it will overload the wire and melt or burn. The correct way is ferrules. The second best way is bare wire tightened down every so often until the creep goes away. All this is for stranded wire and screw connectors. Solid core wire is a different thing and probably shouldn't be used at all on a 3D printer.
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