I bought 4 DRV8825 boards and soldered the headers on today. One board seems dead; I noticed that I couldn’t set the reference voltage, and then I traced the problem to the driver not outputting 3.3v, as measured at the chip pin. The behavior is the same at all other positions on my printer driver board; the board is getting the 12v motor voltage and ground is connected. All other 3 drivers seem to work perfectly all positions on the printer driver board. If the issue is a solder joint, it doesn’t seem to be an obvious one. I know the board was not connected wrong, and in fact, I’ve never even tried to connect up a stepper motor to it.
Any ideas on what to check and/or resolder? I’d much prefer to fix this than wait for a replacement, but I’m starting to think that may be the only option. Thanks!
Hello.
I am sorry you are having trouble with your DRV8825 carrier. We test all of these boards before they ship, so it was likely working at some point. However, if three of the four boards are working in the same setup, then something is probably wrong with the remaining board.
One possible explanation would be damage from an LC voltage spike. Under the “Power connections” section of the product page for that board, we recommend adding a capacitor between VMOT and GND. Does your setup use a capacitor in that way?
As you already mentioned, another possible explanation could be that there is a cold solder joint. You might try checking the bold connections shown in the minimal wiring diagrams. If the issue is not the result of a bad solder connection, then it is likely the board is damaged and the only practical solution is to replace it. If you email us with your order information and mention this forum post, we can see what we can do.
-Jon
