Just in case anyone else is searching the forums about a similar issue, i replaced the damaged driver chip with a new one and the axis is now working fine again. There was a small silicone pad on the back of the old driver chip and thermal grease so i used this pad on the new chip and applied MX4 Thermal non electrically conductive paste to the back of the chip.

I did check that all the socket pins were working correctly and were not damaged prior to installing the new chip. The only slightly difficult thing was getting the pins into the socket without bending them as they are quite delicate. I did several hours of cutting last night with no issues