Did I Just Fry My Driver!!

[bassman2914]

last night i was working on testing my steppers since I finally found a computer with a parallel card that worked. I had a 12v power supply to test with but didn't like the results since it couldn't get the motor past 200rpm before failing. I grabbed another power supply with about 14v that could put out about 5 amps and soldered some wires and put the power supplies in series. I was only running 1 motor rated at 2.4 amps so i figured 5 amps was plenty. I have one of these drivers (CNC TB6560 3 Axis Stepper Motor Driver Controller Board | eBay) so i thought since it has a power limiter I should be fine. When i hooked it up within seconds i smelled something burning and hurt popping(likely shorting)and it was the second power supply i had hooked up. I had previously bi passed the fuses since the kept blowing at every split second short so it obviously allowed too much power through(more than 5 amps!!). I was wondering if this driver actually has a power limiter or if it doesn't and the 26v made it such way too much current! My other thought is somewhere in my hast i screwed something up and it's more likely i was just shorting the power supplies(better than my driver). The motor wasn't hot after and the driver didn't smell at all like smoke so I hope that's a good sign. Thanks in advance. P.S.-Is it really necessary for me to do at least 1/2 step to reduce motor resonating? my machine is going to be extremely rigid so i don't know if it matters cuz i need every bit of torque i can get from these.

[doorknob]

My first suspicion would be that you fried the power supply by shorting it out, and you may not have damaged the driver, but you will need to do some testing to be certain.

It sounds like your power supply does not (or did not) have internal short-circuit protection, but you may indeed have short-circuited its output. That would have happened if, for example, the negative terminal of both your 12-volt and 14-volt supplies were connected to ground and you connected the positive terminal of the 14-volt supply to the negative terminal of the 12-volt supply.