I am using a 12v DC motor from a drill for a project of mine. I powered it on a 12V drill battery and plugged it into the correct outputs on the l298 motor driver which is being controlled by my Arduino uno.
Everything was plugged in like this.
OUT1=Drill motor voltage
OUT2=Drill motor ground
Enable=pin 10 on the Arduino uno
In1= pin 8 on the Arduino uno
In2= pin 9 on the Arduino uno
Gnd=Gnd on the drill battery I also had another wire plugged into the same port to supply the Gnd to the Arduino.
l298 Voltage= voltage on the drill battery
5v on the l298=5v on the Arduino uno.
After looking at the circuit board I noticed that the ground and voltage from the drill motor could potentially have been touching could this have caused the capacitor to blow up? I feel like this is a really dumb question but any advice will help. Thanks.
Not very likely. A drawing of how you have things hooked up would be a whole lot easier to understand. What do you mean "blow up"? Which capacitor? Did it actually explode and blow stuff all over your project? Or did only smoke come out?
Paul
Hi,
Welcome to the forum.
Please read the first post in any forum entitled how to use this forum.
http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php/topic,148850.0.html
Can you please post a picture of your project.
Thankyou.. Tom.. 
Alright sorry, here is a diagram of my circuit and by blowing up I mean the capacitor smoked a lot, then popped. It looks live it has been unraveled.
The ancient L298 chip can't handle high current motors. You will need a modern, high power motor driver, like those from Pololu.
Alright, thanks I will look into that.
jremington:
The ancient L298 chip can't handle high current motors. You will need a modern, high power motor driver, like those from Pololu.
Drill motors take massive currents, 10A and up, completely out of the league of anything but a high current MOSFET H-bridge.