Two power supply units, equivalent settings, different results, why?

Confusing to my 3D printer, the background for question: I recently bought a 3d printer which runs on a Melzi v2 board [http://reprap.org/wiki/Melzi]. It came with a 12V 20A power supply unit (multimeter readings showed values ranging from 11.8V-12.1, im my books that seems ok). After completing all the assembly work and re-checking [multiple times] that all connections were correct and secure I powered it up. Everything seemed to be working perfectly up until I plugged the USB port into my computer, windows notified me that a power surge has occurred on the port and shut the port down. The USB cable was burning hot and one end of the connector started to smoke. I quickly turned everything off. I disconnected all the wires on the board and discovered that one of the IC’s on the board had short-circuited. Further inspection showed that the GND pin on the usb was sinking a large amount of current (cable[http://www.kynix.com/Parts/3249163/CABLE.html] was permanently damaged so I threw it away). I contacted the manufacturer and they sent me a new board.

This time around I decided to place some safeguards between my pc and the board, so I placed two 50 ohm resistors on the D+ and D- lines and a 6V 0.1A fuse on the GND (see image below). When I powered everything up, once again everything seemed to be working fine up until I connected the USB cable in. R1 and R2 both burnt up so I disconnected everything (this time around board and pc were fine). I changed out R1 and R2 and decided to retry the experiment with my lab power supply set to 12V. The problem disappeared

So my question is why would two different power supply units, both at equivalent settings, be giving me different results?

Any help/suggestions would be much appreciated!
Thanks

In my oppinion the Melzi board is a steaming pile of crap that shouldn’t be alowed within 10 feet of a 3d printer or anything you don’t want to destroy. Depending on which version of the mezli you have, and from which manufacturer (many cheap melzi V2 boards are actually V1 boards with the power issues) it may not be your power supply at all, but the board. If the USB cable was as hot as you describe, it may have had Main current running down it at some point, since 12V shouldn’t do all that much to a USB port, and certanly shouldn’t heat a usb cable to failure.

a manufacturer that uses a melzi board also uses cheap unreliable power supplies. Your power supply may be intermittantly spiking higher current than you are expecting, or other fun to troubleshoot issues. The short answer is “if you have 2 power supply units, and you are getting results that differ when they should be identical, one of them is broken, replace it”