Sherline & Taig Lathe & Mill Upgrades, Reviews for Florence, WI 54121
Numerous have an interest in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the Florence, WI. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, attract lots of people. There’s just on place to get the at a sensible cost and that’s GlockCNC. Updating to a ISO20 or BT30 is perfect for the mill. Choosing a 5C is perfect for the lathes. Naturally, you would need to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is also a reward. The schedule of tooling for each of these designs is outstanding. For 5C collet sets, you can get excellent quality from Hardinge.
Sherline headstocks and parts come in a variety of designs from the factory. Generally ER16 and MT1. Both of which are really small. Sherline likewise provides 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 travel through hole. The 5C collet for the Sherline lathe would be the very best. For Sherline mills, a lot of really do not care for the MT1 and hardly like the ER16. An R8 spindle with a low profile would be best. It provides the most versatility and many tool choices. You can discover 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 versions. Recently, they have added ballscrew variations 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 Florence.
Taig likewise provides lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines main competitors. In fact, you can discover a lot of videos and posts referring to Taig vs Sherline. The Taig products offer far more rigid methods and usually more “heavy duty” in general. The Taig motors are pretty weak, similar to the Sherline motors. A high quality brushless motor can make the machine appear like a completely different mill or lathe. Taig also offers a good CNC prepared mill and lathe. You can also choose their digital CNC system which utilizes closed-looped steppers and Mach3 software. The Taig spindles have the exact 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 great thing is that they now provide a ballscrew choice for their mill and lathe. Plus, the deal a “gang tool” lathe. The disadvantage with both produces is the lack of serious upgrades.
Sherline provides many parts and attachments, but not much to make it a better machine. To start with, they headstock uses poor quality bearings and the bearings are too small. This means 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 good and subject to vibration problems. For example, they offer numerous lathe devices, however 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 restricts its use. Of course those in Florence, Wisconsin 54121 may have different needs.
There are other machine alternatives too. You can also buy from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, in addition to other suppliers that use Chinese mills and lathes. Of course the quality isn’t real excellent. Numerous 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 desire to choose a CNC machine, your best option is the Centroid Acorn. The software and hardware is far much better than Mach3 or much of the hardware alternatives 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 best and truly just targeted at amature use. Centroid is a well established industrial manufacture of mills. Many of which are 5 axis machines. The very best servos to use for CNC on the Sherline or Taig are either DMM, Clearpath or GlockCNC brand names. 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 complain that the small chucks will not hold steel for cutting. The part will just fall out. On alternative 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 choose bigger bearings.