Failed Stepper Driver and Ramps?

Hey everyone,

So before I get into checking every single pin on these controllers I want to see if anyone knows a possible cause of this issue. I've been using this printer for about 4 months with no electronic issues at all. The last couple prints I have tried had shown missing layers getting progressively worse as time goes on. The other day my final print had quit extruding part way through and I had thought it was stripped filament but, that wasn't the case. I am getting no response from the extruder stepper at all. The first thing I did was plug the extruder wiring into the Y stepper driver to which the extruder stepper worked. So, this assures my stepper and wiring are good. After fiddling around some more I find that my extruder stepper driver in the Y socket will not turn the Y motor. So, possibly a bad stepper driver? What is odd though is I tried putting the Y stepper driver into the extruder socket and still had no success. This almost makes it seem to me as the extruder portion of the RAMPS board as well as the extruder stepper driver have failed. I could see this if one were to of shorted and caused the other to fail but what I find also odd is even after swapping the extruder and Y driver back to there original positions the Y stepper continues to work. I would have figured that if the stepper driver killed the RAMPS extruder circuit it would have done the same to the Y when I plugged it in or vise versa. Another thing I have found is that on the four pins to the extruder stepper I get 12v all the time on all four pins.

If anyone has any suggestions it would be very helpful! Thank you.

It sounds like the mega io lines that are used for the extruder where blown out when the e stepper driver failed.

when things blow they often spike then get burnt out so no longer cause any further issue. but this is random.

You can still use RAMPS by configuring the ( empty? ) E1 socket. Just reflash the firmware with new pin assignment. ( swap pins from E0 and E1 )

Well, I ended up checking every single pin on the mega to find out that they all work. I swapped to E1 and currently it is working I'll probably dig into it more tomorrow and see if I can report back with anything else I find.

Well, I ended up checking every single pin on the mega to find out that they all work. I swapped to E1 and currently it is working I'll probably dig into it more tomorrow and see if I can report back with anything else I find.