Sherline & Taig Lathe & Mill Upgrades, Reviews for East Wenatchee, WA 98802
Many have an interest in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the East Wenatchee, WA. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, attract many individuals. There’s just on place 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. Naturally, you would need to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is also a reward. The availability of tooling for each of these models is excellent. For 5C collet sets, you can get great 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 also provides WW collet sets for extremely tiny work. Generally watchmakers and clockmakers use the WW collets. Most choose ER25, ER32 or even 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 do not care for the MT1 and barely like the ER16. An R8 spindle with a low profile would be best. It uses the most versatility and lots of tool choices. You can find many evaluations on both the lathe and the mill. Popular models are the 2000, 5400, 4000 and 4500 in metric and inch. The also come in CNC, handbook and CNC ready versions. Recently, they have added ballscrew variations for sale. This is far better than the older leadscrew type. Search the web if you desire a review or contrast of ballscrews compared to leadscrews. There are suppliers near East Wenatchee.
Taig also provides lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines primary competition. In fact, you can find a great deal of videos and articles referring to Taig vs Sherline. The Taig items use far more rigid methods and typically more “strong” 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 offers a good CNC all set mill and lathe. You can also choose their digital CNC system which utilizes closed-looped steppers and Mach3 software. The Taig spindles have the same problems as the Sherline. They are far too small. The only exception is the 5C collet headstock model they use. We will do a review of the 5C in the future. The nice thing is that they now offer a ballscrew alternative for their mill and lathe. Plus, the deal a “gang tool” lathe. The drawback with both produces is the absence of severe upgrades.
Sherline offers many parts and accessories, however not much to make it a better machine. To start with, they headstock uses bad quality bearings and the bearings are too little. This suggests the spindle itself needs to be little. A spindle with very little mass suggests the lathe or mill the surface quality will not be as excellent and subject to vibration issues. For instance, they offer numerous lathe devices, but you can’t get a 5C headstock or ER25, ER32 or ER40. Plus, the travel through hole has to be small since the bearings are small. There is a similar issue with the mill. You can only utilize ER16 collets and this limits its use. Of course those in East Wenatchee, Washington 98802 may have different needs.
There are other machine choices too. You can likewise purchase from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, in addition to other suppliers that offer Chinese mills and lathes. Naturally the quality isn’t real great. Lots of wind up either very 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 opt for a CNC machine, your best option 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 consistent speed for turning applications. Mach3 and Mach4 were the requirement for many years. Nevertheless, they were cumbersome at best and truly just targeted at amature usage. Centroid is a well established commercial manufacture of mills. Much of which are 5 axis makers. The very best servos to use 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 using the Acorn hardware.
What about a much better jaw chuck for the lathe? Numerous grumble that the small chucks won’t hold steel for cutting. The part will just fall out. On option is to buy a headstock with a jaw chuck adapter integrated in. This can open more options for 5″ or 6″ chuck. Particularly if you opt for bigger bearings.