Sherline & Taig CNC Mill & Lathe Upgrades, Reviews for Casco, ME 04015
Numerous are interested in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the Casco, ME. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, attract lots of people. There’s just on location to get the at a sensible price and that’s GlockCNC. Updating to a ISO20 or BT30 is perfect for the mill. Going with a 5C is perfect for the lathes. Of course, you would need to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is likewise a bonus offer. The schedule of tooling for each of these models is excellent. For 5C collet sets, you can get excellent quality from Hardinge.
Sherline headstocks and parts come in a range of designs from the factory. Typically ER16 and MT1. Both of which are very little. Sherline likewise uses WW collet sets for very tiny work. Generally watchmakers and clockmakers use the WW collets. The majority of choose ER25, ER32 or even ER40 collet sizes with a bigger spindle travel through hole. The 5C collet for the Sherline lathe would be the very best. For Sherline mills, most truly don’t care for the MT1 and barely like the ER16. An R8 spindle with a low profile would be best. It provides the most versatility and numerous tool choices. You can find many evaluations on both the lathe and the mill. Popular designs are the 2000, 5400, 4000 and 4500 in metric and inch. The also been available in CNC, handbook and CNC ready variations. Just recently, they have actually included ballscrew variations for sale. This is far much better than the older leadscrew type. Browse the internet if you desire an evaluation or contrast of ballscrews compared to leadscrews. There are suppliers near Casco.
Taig also offers lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines main competition. In reality, you can find a lot of videos and posts describing Taig vs Sherline. The Taig products use a lot more rigid methods and normally more “strong” in general. The Taig motors are quite weak, much like the Sherline motors. A high quality brushless motor can make the machine seem like a totally various mill or lathe. Taig likewise provides a great CNC prepared 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 same issues as the Sherline. They are far too small. The only exception is the 5C collet headstock design they use. We will do a review of the 5C in the future. The good thing is that they now use a ballscrew alternative for their mill and lathe. Plus, the offer a “gang tool” lathe. The drawback with both makes is the lack of severe upgrades.
Sherline uses numerous parts and attachments, but very little to make it a better machine. To start with, they headstock uses bad quality bearings and the bearings are too small. This implies the spindle itself needs to be little. A spindle with very little mass means the lathe or mill the finish quality will not be as good and based on vibration problems. For example, they provide lots of lathe devices, but you can’t get a 5C headstock or ER25, ER32 or ER40. Plus, the travel through hole needs to be little since the bearings are little. There is a similar problem with the mill. You can only use ER16 collets and this limits its use. Of course those in Casco, Maine 04015 may have different needs.
There are other machine alternatives too. You can likewise buy from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, along with other suppliers that offer Chinese mills and lathes. Of course the quality isn’t real great. Many end up either really disappointed or doing a lot of modifications to get the machine to do what they want. Excellent upgrades are ballscrews, updated brushless motor, encoder for threading and so on.
If you want to go with a CNC machine, your best choice is the Centroid Acorn. The software application and hardware is far better than Mach3 or many of the hardware choices in the market. You can do rigid tapping and threading if you have an encoder. Plus, it provides continuous speed for turning applications. Mach3 and Mach4 were the requirement for many years. However, they were cumbersome at best and actually only targeted at amature use. Centroid is a well established commercial manufacture of mills. Many of which are 5 axis machines. The very best servos to utilize for CNC on the Sherline or Taig are either DMM, Clearpath or GlockCNC brands. Integrate that with the Centroid Acorn and you will have a powerful machine. We will also produce reviews of the Taig CNC mill and Sherline CNC mill utilizing the Acorn hardware.
What about a better jaw chuck for the lathe? Many grumble that the small chucks will not hold steel for cutting. The part will simply fall out. On alternative is to buy a headstock with a jaw chuck adapter built in. This can open more alternatives for 5″ or 6″ chuck. Especially if you go with bigger bearings.