Acquired two Boxford Duet desktop cnc machines in an auction.
The software that came with them is DOS based and i would like to update them. Luckily the manuals i got have the schematics.
I also would like to use the existing electronics if possible.
The DB25 pin-out shows the pin numbers and functions but there are a few I'm unsure about.

Has Anyone convertered one of thes yet to Mach 3/4? There are some old post but the are incomplete.

thanks, John

Not much help to you but due to the shrouded nature of any available information from Boxford when I converted my VMC all the existing electronics (except the VFD) were discarded in favour of the more modern stepper drivers, etc.

Tweakie.

Hey John,

Have you had any luck controlling these? I recently got one myself and haven't been able to find any software for it yet.

Is there any more schematics for the machine? I'm starting to convert my machine and haven't decided if I will keep the old electronics. Is there a position sensor for the spindel?

all of the schematics are in the user manual. I've attached the 3 manuals I have for this manual.

to more directly answer your question: no, there are no position sensors. However, there are two encoders on the spindle, one with 32 ticks per rev, and other other with a single tick per rev (for timing, specifically thread cutting).


I got my machine up and running with the original controller, but decided the parallel and serial interface, and the ancient software wasn't worth the hassle. I'm in the process of replacing some of the control electronics with a PoKeys57CNC controller, which supports mach3 and 4, and has usb and ethernet interfaces. hopefully that will bring this machine fully into the modern era.