Replicator 1 is down for the count... Magic Smoke has been released

[Fastrack]

Hi all,

I was about 15 minutes away from finally trying Nylon 618.  The last print was just finishing... and POP... lights went off... display flickered.  And of course the magic smoke smell followed shortly after. 

I sent an email off to sup...@makerbot.com as the online tool seems busted.

Here's a pic, as always nothing else on the board looks damaged.. but we all know it is!

Ben

[Joseph Chiu]

Oh man, another one bites the dust. :(   Best wishes for a speedy recovery.  Any ideas on what happened?  Do the cables look ok?

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[Fastrack]

I haven't ohm tested the cables yet..  They seem to look okay visually.  Just happened about 15 minutes ago.  I thought I had escaped the MBI gremlins! I kept seeing Gary's posts on protection for the board.. but I kept putting it off...

Ben

[Fastrack]

I found the piece that blew off.. Maybe some super glue and an ancient spell... I could put the magic smoke back in? 

Ben

[Gary Crowell]

I just ordered a quantity of those boards - but they'll be at least a month out to get boards back and assembled.  Dang, I'm sorry to hear about your problem.

Gary

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[Joseph Chiu]

Pfft.  Should have 3D printed a replacement while you had the chance.  ;-)

[drando...@gmail.com]

Be sure to let us (more importantly me) know when the boards are in so we(I) can buy one.

[Fastrack]

MBI has replaced my MB under warranty and is also sending a replacement X-stop cable.  I got the FedEX tracking # today.  They said they were out of stock until this morning!

Ben

[Joseph Chiu]

Any chance you can send me your old one if it is indeed dead? I'd love to see how it's made!

On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 12:56 PM, Fastrack <benjami...@gmail.com> wrote:

MBI has replaced my MB under warranty and is also sending a replacement X-stop cable.  I got the FedEX tracking # today.  They said they were out of stock until this morning!

Ben

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[Fastrack]

Im going to keep on the off chance that someone determines how to fix it, which is probably about as lucky as winning the lottery.

Ben

[Jetguy]

We are fixing boards but it isn't cheap, easy or something most people
can even come close to doing at home.
EVERY chip is blown and needs replaced. The USB to serial connection
is killed first and the 8U2 processor that does that is ONLY
solderable via reflow. It's at least $100 chips alone if you want to
fix everything and that's not even mods.
Right now, because it's not work completely tearing down the board to
bare bone just to solder the 8u2 the current ugly method is to bypass
with an external 8u2 from Sparkfun that is $20 in itself. The mega1280
is nearly $18 and since it's that high, we are looking at dropping
2560s on them. The MAX6675s are now running about $15 each so right
there is $30. It's not hard to see how this adds up quick. We aren't
even listing the botsteps with are likely blown as well. Again, every
chip is blown. The bare minimum you can run with is the mega, some
serial to USB solution, 2 thermocouple amps, and let's assume you go
with normal pololus and skip the digipots.

It is possible to fix, but like I said, there are some parts that are
so tiny, the best way is just to bypass. It's probably quicker and
easier to buy a Sainsmart mega2560 and use a protoshield and some
breakouts from Adafruit or Sparkfun using the schematics up on
thingiverse.

At a minimum, the best thing you could do is give it to a fellow
engineer to help discover why they blow and pray we come up with a way
to prevent it. Sitting at your house on shelf does nobody any good.

[John Sondericker]

I think the proper procedure in these situations is to "wave a dead chicken over it." If that doesn't work, figure out what the part was, order it on digikey, and solder it in place. It's probably, even likely, that when a power transistor or regulator pops like this it's for no an actual reason, but perhaps some other component(s) have also failed on the board, either before or after the thing popped. An example of this, as perhaps analogy, it could be something like a stepper motor has failed and shorted its windings. Then, due to over-currents, the part popped. 

In any case maybe try to replace the one component and see if it fixes things. 50%/50% perhaps. Part should not cost much. If you have some electronic chops you could maybe get a schematic for the board and test some other related parts.

Hope that was helpful.

-J

[Jetguy]

John, while we certainly hope that would be the case, I can garantee,
if the regulator failed, then the extremely voltage sensitive 8u2
failed and thus, you have NO way to communicate with the processor via
USB.
Understand, this isn't a one off, many, many of these boards have
failed and it is always a complete meltdown. When 24 volts goes down
the 5 volt bus, every single chip is destroyed.

44 message long thread on failures
http://groups.google.com/group/makerbot/browse_thread/thread/6e81b02d68add91d/0a4c33afd601c555?q=pop&lnk=ol&
11 messages
http://groups.google.com/group/makerbot/browse_thread/thread/26bc2aab17e2c3c6/e68dcdae16d65a73?lnk=gst&q=pop#e68dcdae16d65a73
13 more here
http://groups.google.com/group/makerbot/browse_thread/thread/c1f4927349f4b9a4/5f04b284071b0cae?lnk=gst&q=pop#5f04b284071b0cae
http://groups.google.com/group/makerbot/browse_thread/thread/26bc2aab17e2c3c6/24c5eda54e9e55eb?lnk=gst&q=pop#24c5eda54e9e55eb
http://groups.google.com/group/makerbot/browse_thread/thread/c1f4927349f4b9a4/2f1a3dad5714a08e?lnk=gst&q=pop#2f1a3dad5714a08e

Then we go into failure analysis from failed boards:
66 messages just on that thread
http://groups.google.com/group/makerbot/browse_thread/thread/e67e07c16c9ace51/9be2903b7e4ae54f?q=analysis&lnk=ol&
At least one protection device here
http://groups.google.com/group/makerbot/browse_thread/thread/4184079f0af25377/b99f3313c7a12ce0?lnk=gst&q=mightyboard#b99f3313c7a12ce0

[Jetguy]

Also, if you have your heart set on proving me wrong, then use this
fairly safe test on the board. You need a FTDI cable, but really any
USB breakout will work. What we want is a current limited 5 volt
source of no more than about 500mA (AKA 1/2 Amp). You then completely
pull the board out of the machine and remove all wires. Power the
board via the endstop connectors from said 5 volt source. This is
insanely easy provided you have at least a FTDI cable or whatever
power source and jumper wires that are preferably female on one end.
The endstops ports (all of them) have 4 pins. The center 2 are ground.
The bottom pin closest to the edge of the board where the heaters
connect is the 5 volt rail. From the FTDI cable, you ONLY use the
black and red wires. Black is ground and Red is 5 volts. I then used 2
male to female jumpers from Adafruit oe Sparkfun to then feed the
board via the male endstop pins. Again the basic idea is to power the
board from a current limited source. Should the board be shorted so
bad, it will trip the overcurrent on that USB port. Once you have the
board powered many will still do the turnon beeps as the atmega1280 is
a damn tough chip to completely kill. But that is the problem, even if
it partially survives, every single board to date tested had the
serial port killed when the 8u2 fails. This more or less ruins any
usefulness of the machine as then the only way to flash the chip is
via the ICSP and a programmer, you cannot connect via rep-g to set
steps per mm or other settings in the eeprom. Yes, we were smart
enough to remove the 8u2 or the 2 resistors in place between the 2
chips for serial coms and the mega still is always hurt.

The obvious sign here are that even with the board hack powered,
plugging in USB will show the 8u2 is dead as the computer will not
recognize the usb. Further, begin doing the heat test while powered.
By that, I mean put your finger on each and every chip and see what
gets warm or hot. Trust me, you'll know the difference. Most all of
the other parts on the board are always damaged because the cascading
failure always puts 24 volts down the 5 volt bus. For whatever reason,
this should blow the mega up completely but as I said, I have seen it
partially survive but it's so damaged and unusable, basically trash.

On the one board we (and really it was James Armstrong doing most of
it) attempted to fix every single chip was replaced because they all
were shorting the 5 volt rail or drawing excessive current and
obviously not working AKA blown.
The following list:
5 digipots
Mega 1280
8U2
Logic chips for LED driver circuit
2 thermocouple amps
FETS for logic circuit
Logic for thermal cutoff
all 5 botsteps

Again, let's just add that up from Mouser or Digikey
5 digipots
Mega 1280 $18
8U2 $20 (because the replacement part must be reflow soldered a
Sparkfun breakout is easier but more expensive)
Logic chips for LED driver circuit
2 thermocouple amps $30
FETS for LED circuit
Logic for thermal cutoff
all 5 botsteps (minimally $55 for Pololus or a lot more work to fix
the original board and again this is a reflow solder part)

Sor for basic repair/testing, you are going to need at least the mega
and an 8u2 breakout (about $40). That's so you can find out what else
is blown, likely the $30 in thermocuple amps. So now that's $70 plus
shipping. We haven't even touched a replacement regulator and likely,
all 5 botsteps are blown so we still aren't at a working board.

Just so I'm providing more info than just complaining, here is the BOM
of parts that likely failed:
Makerbot MightyBoard REVE BOM,,,

1,LM1084-5V,LM1084-5V Regulator,U13
1,V_REG_MIC2920,3.3V Regulator,U14
2,AQV25,Solid State Relays,"U6, U7"
1,ATMEGA8U2-MU,ATMEGA8U2-MU,U3
1,ATMEGA1280-16AU,ATMEGA1280-16AU,U4
5,BOTSTEP17,BOTSTEP17,"BOTSTEP-A, BOTSTEP-B, BOTSTEP-X, BOTSTEP-Y,
BOTSTEP-Z"
2,MAX6675,MAX6675 Thermocouple Chip,"U1, U2"
5,MCP4018,MCP4018 Digital POT,"U8, U9, U10, U11, U12"
1,NC7WZ02,Dual CMOS NOR Gate (Used as SR Latch),U5
1,PCA9533,RGB LED Driver,U15
2,PGB1010604,VARISTORCN0603,"VR1, VR2"
3,FDV301N,FDV301N NFET,"U16, U17, U18"
1,"XC7WH14DC,125",Tri Schmitt Logic Inverter,U19
6,PSMN7R0-30YL,PSMN7R0-30YL FETs,"Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4, Q5, Q6"

On May 3, 11:41 pm, Jetguy <barrych...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> John, while we certainly hope that would be the case, I can garantee,
> if the regulator failed, then the extremely voltage sensitive 8u2
> failed and thus, you have NO way to communicate with the processor via
> USB.
> Understand, this isn't a one off, many, many of these boards have
> failed and it is always a complete meltdown. When 24 volts goes down
> the 5 volt bus, every single chip is destroyed.
>

> 44 message long thread on failureshttp://groups.google.com/group/makerbot/browse_thread/thread/6e81b02d...
> 11 messageshttp://groups.google.com/group/makerbot/browse_thread/thread/26bc2aab...
> 13 more herehttp://groups.google.com/group/makerbot/browse_thread/thread/c1f49273...http://groups.google.com/group/makerbot/browse_thread/thread/26bc2aab...http://groups.google.com/group/makerbot/browse_thread/thread/c1f49273...

>
> Then we go into failure analysis from failed boards:

> 66 messages just on that threadhttp://groups.google.com/group/makerbot/browse_thread/thread/e67e07c1...
> At least one protection device herehttp://groups.google.com/group/makerbot/browse_thread/thread/4184079f...