Recently purchased a JTech laser upgrade bundle and couldn’t get it to work at all. After a few phone calls with them (which i must admit, their customer service is A+), came to the conclusion that i’ve fried the ATMega328p chip on my carbide board. Easy option is to replace the board, cheaper option would be to attempt to solder a new chip to the board.
What is the recommendation from the community? I’m trying to avoid spending $100 on a new board, but also want my laser to work…
There are so many “depends” here that there is no good answer.
If you have experience with QFP soldering then perhaps it’s worth a shot, but you do run the risk of damage to the rest of the board… But there again if it’s already dead (and that you have proved that) then what is there to lose. A 328 is a cheap chip.
The right way to do it would be with a warming plate to get the board up to temperature then a hot air gun to complete the removal. You can butcher it with an iron but I wouldn’t recommend that. The board is fairly dense.
The bigger issue you may run into is reflashing the firmware. Depends on if the 328 has the boot loader or not and even then if the Carbide3d utility is see it.
IMHO get a new board to get the machine up and running, then you can play around with this one and if you get it to work, then you have a backup…
My $0.02 anyway…
The machine still works as a CNC…its just not able to communicate with the laser driver. Thats where my predicament is right now. I have a functional router and a super fancy flashlight that doesn’t work
I would replace the board. I did a BitRunner upgrade with board that did not have the plug on it. I am an experiences field engineer and I had a hard time getting the solder to work. I think the boards are $150.00 now with free shipping but contact c3d for an accurate price.
Before you replace the board I would recommend you understand how you “fried” the chip so you dont have two “fried” boards.
Do you have more details as to how you and JTech support have narrowed it down to the microprocessor itself? We may be able to help troubleshoot further. The fact that your unit still functions otherwise is quite interesting.
From the MDI control, are you able to send the needed $32=1 command?
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