Last week, one of my Z axis linear module stopped working. I opened it up and found the motor driver chip (the one below the thermal pad) was fried and there were holes blown through it:
It’s obviously too big to fit inside the linear module, so I decided to just put it outside the module. The wires would have to be extended though. Here’s how the motor should be connected to the driver:
The other board (with the microcontroller on it) inside the linear module doesn’t seem to interact with the motor in any way and is undamaged, so I kept it. Here’s everything ready to be connected.
I’m not sure about the chip because I replaced the whole board rather than the chip. There might be other components damaged on the board too other than just that chip. Also the new board has better cooling (the entire back of that board is heat sink fins) while the original board doesn’t have a heat sink at all, so I worry if I just replace the chip the board may fail again due to heat reasons.