Sherline & Taig Lathe & Mill Upgrades, Reviews for Cloudcroft, NM 88317
Lots of have an interest in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the Cloudcroft, NM. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, appeals to numerous people. There’s only on location to get the at a sensible price and that’s GlockCNC. Upgrading to a ISO20 or BT30 is ideal for the mill. Going with a 5C is ideal for the lathes. Of course, you would require to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is also a bonus. 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 been available in a variety of designs from the factory. Generally ER16 and MT1. Both of which are very small. Sherline likewise offers WW collet sets for extremely small work. Generally watchmakers and clockmakers use the WW collets. A lot of choose ER25, ER32 or even ER40 collet sizes with a larger spindle go through hole. The 5C collet for the Sherline lathe would be the very 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 the most versatility and many tool choices. You can find many reviews 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, manual and CNC ready versions. Just recently, they have actually added ballscrew versions for sale. This is far better than the older leadscrew type. Search the internet if you want a review or comparison of ballscrews compared to leadscrews. There are suppliers near Cloudcroft.
Taig also offers lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines primary competitors. In fact, you can find a great deal of videos and short articles describing Taig vs Sherline. The Taig items offer far more stiff methods and normally more “heavy duty” in general. The Taig motors are pretty weak, just like the Sherline motors. A high quality brushless motor can make the machine appear like a totally different mill or lathe. Taig also provides a nice 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 same issues as the Sherline. They are far too small. The only exception is the 5C collet headstock design they offer. We will do an evaluation of the 5C in the future. The nice thing is that they now use a ballscrew option for their mill and lathe. Plus, the deal a “gang tool” lathe. The downside with both manufactures is the lack of severe upgrades.
Sherline provides lots of parts and attachments, but not much to make it a much better machine. To begin with, they headstock uses poor quality bearings and the bearings are too little. This implies the spindle itself needs to be small. A spindle with really little mass implies the lathe or mill the finish quality won’t be as great and based on vibration issues. For instance, they provide many lathe devices, however you can’t get a 5C headstock or ER25, ER32 or ER40. Plus, the go through hole needs to be small since the bearings are small. There is a comparable problem with the mill. You can just utilize ER16 collets and this limits its usage. Of course those in Cloudcroft, New Mexico 88317 may have different needs.
There are other machine options too. You can likewise buy from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, together with other suppliers that provide Chinese mills and lathes. Obviously the quality isn’t genuine excellent. Numerous wind up either extremely dissatisfied or doing a lot of modifications to get the machine to do what they want. Outstanding upgrades are ballscrews, upgraded brushless motor, encoder for threading and so on.
If you desire to opt for a CNC machine, your best bet is the Centroid Acorn. The software application and hardware is far better than Mach3 or a lot of the hardware choices in the market. You can do stiff tapping and threading if you have an encoder. Plus, it provides constant speed for turning applications. Mach3 and Mach4 were the requirement for many years. However, they were cumbersome at finest and really just targeted at amature usage. Centroid is a well recognized industrial manufacture of mills. Much of which are 5 axis makers. The best servos to use 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 likewise produce reviews 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 small chucks will not hold steel for cutting. The part will simply fall out. On option is to buy a headstock with a jaw chuck adapter integrated in. This can open more choices for 5″ or 6″ chuck. Particularly if you go with larger bearings.