Sherline & Taig Lathe & Mill Upgrades, Reviews for Athens, GA 30605
Many have an interest in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the Athens, GA. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, interest many people. There’s just on location to get the at a sensible cost which’s GlockCNC. Updating to a ISO20 or BT30 is ideal for the mill. Going with a 5C is ideal for the lathes. Naturally, you would need to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is also a benefit. The availability of tooling for each of these designs is excellent. For 5C collet sets, you can get excellent quality from Hardinge.
Sherline headstocks and parts can be found in a variety of designs from the factory. Typically ER16 and MT1. Both of which are very small. Sherline likewise uses WW collet sets for extremely small work. Mainly watchmakers and clockmakers use the WW collets. Many choose ER25, ER32 and even ER40 collet sizes with a larger spindle go through hole. The 5C collet for the Sherline lathe would be the best. For Sherline mills, most really don’t care for the MT1 and barely like the ER16. An R8 spindle with a low profile would be best. It provides one of the most flexibility and many tool choices. You can find numerous reviews on both the lathe and the mill. Popular designs are the 2000, 5400, 4000 and 4500 in metric and inch. The likewise come in CNC, manual and CNC all set versions. Recently, they have included ballscrew versions for sale. This is far better than the older leadscrew type. Browse the internet if you want an evaluation or contrast of ballscrews compared to leadscrews. There are suppliers near Athens.
Taig likewise offers lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines primary competitors. In fact, you can find a lot of videos and articles describing Taig vs Sherline. The Taig products use a lot more stiff methods and normally more “heavy duty” in general. The Taig motors are quite weak, similar to the Sherline motors. A high quality brushless motor can make the machine seem like a totally various mill or lathe. Taig likewise offers a great CNC all set mill and lathe. You can also go with their digital CNC system which utilizes closed-looped steppers and Mach3 software application. The Taig spindles have the very same issues as the Sherline. They are far too small. The only exception is the 5C collet headstock model they offer. We will do an evaluation of the 5C in the future. The great thing is that they now provide a ballscrew option for their mill and lathe. Plus, the offer a “gang tool” lathe. The downside with both manufactures is the absence of severe upgrades.
Sherline offers lots of parts and attachments, however not much to make it a much better machine. To start with, they headstock uses poor quality bearings and the bearings are too little. This implies the spindle itself requires to be small. A spindle with very little mass indicates the lathe or mill the surface quality will not be as great and based on vibration issues. For instance, they offer lots of lathe accessories, however you can’t get a 5C headstock or ER25, ER32 or ER40. Plus, the pass through hole has to be little since the bearings are small. There is a similar issue with the mill. You can only use ER16 collets and this restricts its usage. Of course those in Athens, Georgia 30605 may have different needs.
There are other machine alternatives too. You can likewise buy from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, together with other providers that offer Chinese mills and lathes. Of course the quality isn’t genuine excellent. Many end up either really disappointed or doing a lot of modifications to get the machine to do what they desire. Exceptional upgrades are ballscrews, updated brushless motor, encoder for threading and so on.
If you want to choose a CNC machine, your best option is the Centroid Acorn. The software and hardware is far better than Mach3 or a lot of the hardware options in the market. You can do stiff tapping and threading if you have an encoder. Plus, it offers constant speed for turning applications. Mach3 and Mach4 were the requirement for several years. Nevertheless, they were clunky at finest and truly just aimed at amature usage. Centroid is a well established industrial manufacture of mills. A number of which are 5 axis devices. The very best servos to utilize for CNC on the Sherline or Taig are either DMM, Clearpath or GlockCNC brand names. Combine that with the Centroid Acorn and you will have an effective machine. We will also produce evaluations of the Taig CNC mill and Sherline CNC mill utilizing the Acorn hardware.
What about a better jaw chuck for the lathe? Lots of grumble that the little chucks won’t hold steel for cutting. The part will simply fall out. On choice is to buy a headstock with a jaw chuck adapter built in. This can open more alternatives for 5″ or 6″ chuck. Particularly if you go with bigger bearings.