Dear Chris,

I am having trouble with the number of amps being inputted into the motors of my AR2 robot, and am concerned about whether or not I need to replace the J3 motors due to the amps being too way high on the motor. For some reason while I was wiring the motors, I was having some of my stepper drivers disabling themselves since there were too many amps being passed through the driver (the red light was blinking every few seconds on the driver). I was experimenting on switching which drivers controlled what motor between the J1 and the J2 (note that I had not wired up all the motors yet, just the J1 and J2 at this point), and found that I was able to control the J2 motor with the J3 motor driver (making sure I flipped the right switches), and determined that I had isolated the problem to the J2 driver. I had then tried to wire the J3 motor into the J4 motor driver with the switches set for J3, and unfortunately, the J3 motor potentially burnt itself out when it started to heat up extremely quickly and eventually start emitting small amounts of smoke. What is causing my motor drivers to alert me about my amperage being too high being though I have the switches set up correctly on the motors? This is my first major robotics project by myself, and I am quite a novice when it comes to writing up electronic systems, especially as complex as a robotic arm control box. Any ideas on how I could fix this problem? I'm not entirely sure where all the extra amps are coming from, and I need some guidance on how to solve it since I don't have much experience in electrical design.

Sincerely,

Alex