Superbox CNC

[S R]

Hi All,

I just wanted to say I appreciate your work on the Superbox CNC docnmentation. I have the same system here in London and it's just refusing to die. I've been using it for various medical technology based research projects at UCL.

As such i've been using your wiki a lot for tips and trick and maintainence. 

I'm still running the original windows XP and Mach3 that came with it. Would love to move to linux CNC but a bit scared to break things. So I wondered if you could put me in touch with whoever the wizard is who assembled that wiki/whomever runs the machine now?

Appreciate you are probably busy and while I'm not a member I'd love to come visit sometime, I go to nottingham ocassionally as I work in MRI (it's the hometown of MRI afterall). I think there would need to be some beers on me in that event.

Simon

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Dr Simon Richardson

Biomedical Design Engineer and Physicist

Birkbeck-UCL Centre for Neuroimaging

26 Bedford Way

London WC1H 0AP

+44 (0)79889 684 65

ω=-γB

[Tony S]

Hello Simon,

Thanks for reaching out, and great to hear that you've found useful info via our wiki!
I'll reach out to the members who have contributed to that page, and make them aware of your message.

Kind regards

Tony
ps. love the Pratchet ref.

[Douglas Creek]

Hi Simon,

Thanks so much for emailing us! It's really exciting to hear about another machine like ours, I'm glad it's serving you well!
I'd love to see any pictures/documentation you have of it (and what sort of stuff you're making)!

In terms of upgrading the machine to LinuxCNC (which is a really excellent controller), this *can* really be as  simple as swapping in a different SSD into the PC and installing LinuxCNC on that.
And if there's any issue or you need the machine to be functional, just switch back to the SSD with Mach3 on it.
Then you can make the 'final switch' at your leisure.

And to configure LinuxCNC itself, if our machines are completely identical, then copying over our config folder is essentially the only thing which needs to be done. Of course, if anything is different between our machines, then that needs to be determined before a machine config is assumed to 'just work'.

For example, the xy microstepping has been loosened a little on ours in the hope of making it move a little faster and the X and Z endstops are multiplexed to free up I/O for a probe input.
The machines might also differ in work area, how the I/O is physically connected to the breakout board, possibly even whether the limit switches and endstop are normally open or normally closed.

But all of this is stuff which can be figured out, so it's not a risk when first trying to move or home the machine after setting up LinuxCNC.

Our machine is still using a PC with a parallel port, and besides a slightly upgraded PC and what I mentioned above, the config of the machine is not significantly different from how it would've been configured initially.


Funnily enough, in the past couple of weeks I've been looking into upgrading to a newer version of Debian (I believe our  PC is still on Debian Jessie?), and a more modern install would make the computer a lot more usable. LinuxCNC has been very mature for a long time now, and doesn't tend to make breaking changes, so moving to far newer version of LinuxCNC is very simple - essentially, just copy over the config.

However, newer versions of Debian do seem to have worse latency - some people on the forums suggest sticking with older versions of Debian if using a parallel port.

I will report back on how that progress goes and try a get a copy of our config sorted to send to you, but in the meantime I'd suggest installing the Debian 12(Bookworm) LinuxCNC ISO and running the latency test to see how the PC performs.


But in future I'd like to switch to a dedicated FPGA for step generation, as it's definitely the best choice today as PCs with parallel ports are getting increasingly long in the tooth and cheaper alternatives to MESA cards are becoming more mature. I'd definitely recommend you look into that if you want to go straight to LinuxCNC on a platform which should be a lot more performant without worrying about software stepgen. But then you have a lot more config to do up-front.


Also, the LinuxCNC forums are also a really great place as well if you want to tap into their expertise.
There's not really anything *that* unique to the Superbox, as far as LinuxCNC is concerned it's a parallel port with inputs and outputs connected to specific ports, and config entries like axis max velocities, axis limits, axis homing sequences etc specified in the config. So you can definitely get useful advice from someone which has a different machine to you, if they know LinuxCNC they will be able to help.


Finally, if you can make it up to Nottingham at some point would be great to see you in person! If you want to have a look at the Superbox and the space in general I'd be happy to show you around!
(I've actually been in the MRI centre when UoN used to do 'Mayfest', seeing a bowl of fruit in the MRI was incredible!)

Anyway, I'll try and be in touch, but if you have any specific questions about upgrading to LinuxCNC or anything else regarding the CNC please ask and I'll try my best to get you an answer!


Thanks,

Douglas

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