Sherline & Taig Lathe & Mill Upgrades, Reviews for Drewsville, NH 03604
Lots of have an interest in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the Drewsville, NH. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, appeals to many individuals. There’s only on location to get the at a sensible rate and that’s GlockCNC. Upgrading to a ISO20 or BT30 is perfect for the mill. Going with a 5C is perfect for the lathes. Naturally, you would need to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is likewise a perk. The accessibility of tooling for each of these models is excellent. For 5C collet sets, you can get very good quality from Hardinge.
Sherline headstocks and parts been available in a range of designs from the factory. Normally ER16 and MT1. Both of which are very little. Sherline likewise offers WW collet sets for extremely tiny work. Mainly watchmakers and clockmakers use the WW collets. Many prefer ER25, ER32 or perhaps ER40 collet sizes with a bigger spindle pass through hole. The 5C collet for the Sherline lathe would be the best. For Sherline mills, a lot of truly don’t care for the MT1 and hardly like the ER16. An R8 spindle with a low profile would be best. It provides the most flexibility and lots of 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 can be found in CNC, handbook and CNC all set variations. Recently, they have actually added ballscrew variations for sale. This is far better than the older leadscrew type. Browse the web if you want a review or comparison of ballscrews compared to leadscrews. There are suppliers near Drewsville.
Taig also provides lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines main competition. In reality, you can discover a great deal of videos and short articles referring to Taig vs Sherline. The Taig products provide a lot more stiff methods and usually more “heavy duty” overall. The Taig motors are pretty weak, much like the Sherline motors. A high quality brushless motor can make the machine seem like a totally various mill or lathe. Taig also provides a nice CNC ready mill and lathe. You can also choose their digital CNC system which uses closed-looped steppers and Mach3 software application. The Taig spindles have the exact same problems as the Sherline. They are far too little. The only exception is the 5C collet headstock model they offer. We will do an evaluation of the 5C in the future. The nice thing is that they now offer a ballscrew option for their mill and lathe. Plus, the offer a “gang tool” lathe. The drawback with both makes is the lack of major upgrades.
Sherline uses numerous 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 means the spindle itself needs to be small. A spindle with extremely little mass implies the lathe or mill the surface quality won’t be as good and based on vibration issues. For example, they use many lathe accessories, however you can’t get a 5C headstock or ER25, ER32 or ER40. Plus, the pass through hole has to be small since the bearings are little. There is a comparable problem with the mill. You can just use ER16 collets and this limits its use. Of course those in Drewsville, New Hampshire 03604 may have different needs.
Video: Sherline CNC in Drewsville
There are other machine options too. You can likewise purchase from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, along with other suppliers that use Chinese mills and lathes. Obviously the quality isn’t real great. Many wind up either extremely disappointed or doing a great deal of modifications to get the machine to do what they want. Excellent upgrades are ballscrews, upgraded brushless motor, encoder for threading and so on.
If you prefer to opt for a CNC machine, your best option is the Centroid Acorn. The software and hardware is far better than Mach3 or much of the hardware options in the market. You can do stiff tapping and threading if you have an encoder. Plus, it uses constant speed for turning applications. Mach3 and Mach4 were the standard for several years. Nevertheless, they were cumbersome at finest and really just aimed at amature use. Centroid is a well recognized industrial manufacture of mills. Much of which are 5 axis makers. The best servos to utilize for CNC on the Sherline or Taig are either DMM, Clearpath or GlockCNC brands. Combine that with the Centroid Acorn and you will have an effective machine. We will also produce reviews of the Taig CNC mill and Sherline CNC mill using the Acorn hardware.
What about a better jaw chuck for the lathe? Lots of grumble that the little chucks will not hold steel for cutting. The part will just fall out. On option is to purchase a headstock with a jaw chuck adapter integrated in. This can open up more choices for 5″ or 6″ chuck. Especially if you opt for bigger bearings.