RAMPS started smoking,,,

Hey All... I'm doing some upgrades to my MakerFront Prusa i3 Pro, which include changing to an E3D-V6 Hotend, remote extruder, and changing the bed heater over
to a 200x200 Silicone 12V 150W heater.
When testing the new Silicone heater bed, as I was watching the temps come up, the RAMPS board started smoking... I immediately shut it off.
I was under the impression that a RAMPS 1.4 board would handle the 150W heater without the need for going to a relay or any separate power source.
There no indication of polarity on the leads from the heater pad and I'd been using this RAMPS board for the aluminum printed 'standard' hot bed for the past
few months with no issues. The heater pad was heating up when the board started smoking, so I'm wondering what I'm missing here.
Anyone have any thoughts? I was considering going and picking up an SSR and running the heater directly from the power supply...

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Ron

Welcome to the club!

First, the design max power for the heater output for the RAMPS 1.4 is < 11 * 12 i.e. +/- 130W.

Second, any bad contact or bad solder joint with a resistance > 0.1 Ohm will dissipate > 10W and will probably result in some magic smoke.

Conclusion: unfortunately it is extremely easy to damage a RAMPS 1.4 board when dealing with a heatbed, and it is the part of the RAMPS circuitry that causes the most problems for most people, and you can include me in that group!

HI Andrew! Thanks for the prompt reply!
I stopped and picked up a 12V 10A SSR this afternoon, and am planning on wiring it in over the next day or two as time allows.
In your opinion, whats the next best option/upgrade from RAMPS? I'm pretty new to 3D printing, going on about 3 months or so now, and seem to
learn something new every day. I'm 46 and have had a lot of hobbies over the years and am really enjoying this one, so I don't plan on ditching it
anytime soon... bottom line is, I'm not afraid to invest a little money in quality/reliable components.

On a side note, I'm considering wiring back up the old heater and seeing if it still works, or maybe just throwing a meter on the terminals and
seeing if there's anything there. I shut it down pretty quickly, but I don't know if it was quick enough, then I had to leave for work.
I have another RAMPS board sitting here that is for the Kossel I'm working on, but I can borrow it if needs be to get my i3 back up, RAMPS are
ridiculously cheap now.

Thanks again!

Ron

My recommendation is to stick to using the RAMPS 1.4 + Arduino Mega 2560 for all it's worth, just because the "made in China" clones are so cheap, and most problems with this relatively "old" design can be circumvented with a little bit of care.

Also you have the choice of three well-established different firmwares (Marlin, Repetier, Teacup) or more, and it's a relatively compact stack which is easy to hang on any 3D printer frame.

There was a thread on RAMPS 1.4 upgrades a few weeks ago, I would suggest you check it out. If you just change the heatbed MOSFET for a better one and use a fan to cool the RAMPS 1.4, you get a pretty good 3D printer controller imho.

But since you are using a Kossel delta, I would suggest you check the available 32-bit ARM boards and their firmwares, they are much more expensive (although prices have started to come down lately) but also much faster and that's the direction is which the industry is moving anyway.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/11/2015 09:47AM by AndrewBCN.

Move the RAMPS board from your Kossel to the i3, and get a decent 32-bit board for the Kossel. The cheapest boards are Duet 0.6 from Replikeo and the MKS SBASE 1.2. Both cost $60 from China. The Duet runs RepRapFirmware, which does segmentation-free delta movement, fast auto delta calibration, and provides a good web interface. The MKS runs Smoothieware, which doesn't offer those features yet; however the MKS has 5 drivers rather than the 4 on the Duet 0.6.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

Quote
dc42
The MKS runs Smoothieware

Will you ever try to port your software fork to this or other boards? Or will it be exclusively running on the Duet?

Delta heaven is your SW on a 1/32+ driver board
-Olaf

The problem with porting RepRapFirmware to the Smoothieboard would be that the Smoothie has 32K less RAM. A better target for a port might be the Alligator, which has the same processor as the Duet but has DRV8825 drivers on board. Maybe you should talk to the Alligator folks.

I believe Arthur is working on a Smoothie 2. If that has more RAM and a faster SD card interface, then it might be a good target for a port.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/13/2015 03:18AM by dc42.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

I am having a similar problem... i just build the Folger Tech Kossle delta printer and it came with a broken Thermal-couple so I had to wait for that replacement lol then on the first day of real printing after all the calibration a few hours into it the heat bed started smoking... Looking closer it was the actual power connector from the power supply to the ramps board that was melting. After inspecting and testing all the heat bed circuit everything checks out and nothing is blown. I am lost now and they are sending me a new ramps board, but I don't think that is going to fix it. The actual heat bed ohmed out to the correct value and the mosfet was removed and tested good, for some reason the fuses didnt blow so I am just wondering if this connector just got a bad connection and heated up --> worst connection, more heat and so on. Can this be an issue with the power supply at all? Should I just take the mosfet off the ramps board and build a external thermal control board for the heat bed connected directly to the power supply with hook up wires from the ramps to control the gate? This way all of that high current is now localized away from any other sensitive circuits with secure connections.

my prusa i3 start smoking while printing, it is less than one month old, I printed only two items, during 2nd printing, heating failed,next day, i started it all over again, then smelled burning plastic, can't figure out, kept printing, then smoke start coming out from power/ on-off switch box, after opening it, the red wire coming from bed to power were melted.
Please help ,I'm new to 3D printing,
Thanks,
Jassal

Quote
AZ_Ron
I stopped and picked up a 12V 10A SSR this afternoon, and am planning on wiring it in

Hi Ron, do the math:
P = U * I
12V * 10A = 120W
So if you wire up your 12V 150W heated plate, you'll probably see the next portion of magic smoke. You need something for AT LEAST I=P/U = 150W/12V = 12.5A Look for something with 15A minimum.

Quote
sjassal
my prusa i3 start smoking while printing, it is less than one month old, I printed only two items, during 2nd printing, heating failed,next day, i started it all over again, then smelled burning plastic, can't figure out, kept printing, then smoke start coming out from power/ on-off switch box, after opening it, the red wire coming from bed to power were melted.
Please help ,I'm new to 3D printing,
Thanks,
Jassal

Some Possibilities:
-) Terminal screw was not fastened enough or overfastened - thus breaking the terminal.
-) Wire was to thin, thus melting because of dissipated Power

Picture would help to show you the right direction.