Sherline & Taig Lathe & Mill Upgrades, Reviews for Fredericksburg, VA 22406
Many have an interest in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the Fredericksburg, VA. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, interest many individuals. There’s just on place to get the at an affordable cost and that’s GlockCNC. Updating to a ISO20 or BT30 is ideal for the mill. Opting for a 5C is ideal for the lathes. Obviously, you would need to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is likewise a bonus. 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 been available in a variety of designs from the factory. Generally ER16 and MT1. Both of which are very little. Sherline also provides WW collet sets for extremely tiny work. Generally watchmakers and clockmakers utilize the WW collets. The majority 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 best. For Sherline mills, many actually do not care for the MT1 and barely like the ER16. An R8 spindle with a low profile would be best. It offers one of the most flexibility and many tool choices. You can discover many evaluations on both the lathe and the mill. Popular models are the 2000, 5400, 4000 and 4500 in metric and inch. The likewise been available in CNC, manual and CNC ready versions. Recently, they have actually added ballscrew versions for sale. This is far much better than the older leadscrew type. Search the internet if you desire an evaluation or contrast of ballscrews compared to leadscrews. There are suppliers near Fredericksburg.
Taig also uses lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines primary competitors. In reality, you can find a lot of videos and articles describing Taig vs Sherline. The Taig items offer much more rigid methods and typically 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 look like an absolutely various mill or lathe. Taig also offers a nice CNC prepared mill and lathe. You can also choose their digital CNC system which uses closed-looped steppers and Mach3 software. The Taig spindles have the very same issues as the Sherline. They are far too little. The only exception is the 5C collet headstock model they provide. 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 offer a “gang tool” lathe. The disadvantage with both makes is the absence of severe upgrades.
Sherline provides many parts and attachments, however not much to make it a better machine. To start with, they headstock uses bad quality bearings and the bearings are too small. This indicates the spindle itself requires to be small. A spindle with really little mass suggests the lathe or mill the surface quality will not be as good and based on 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 needs to be little since the bearings are small. There is a comparable problem with the mill. You can just use ER16 collets and this restricts its use. Of course those in Fredericksburg, Virginia 22406 may have different needs.
There are other machine choices too. You can likewise purchase from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, together with other suppliers that provide Chinese mills and lathes. Naturally the quality isn’t real excellent. Many wind up either extremely dissatisfied or doing a lot of modifications to get the machine to do what they want. Exceptional 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 and hardware is far better than Mach3 or a number of the hardware options in the market. You can do rigid tapping and threading if you have an encoder. Plus, it uses continuous speed for turning applications. Mach3 and Mach4 were the requirement for many years. Nevertheless, they were cumbersome at best and actually only aimed at amature usage. Centroid is a well recognized industrial manufacture of mills. A number of which are 5 axis machines. The 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 an effective machine. We will likewise produce evaluations 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 just fall out. On alternative is to purchase a headstock with a jaw chuck adapter built in. This can open more choices for 5″ or 6″ chuck. Especially if you opt for bigger bearings.