Sherline & Taig CNC Mill & Lathe Upgrades, Reviews for Graniteville, SC 29829
Many have an interest in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the Graniteville, SC. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, attract numerous individuals. There’s only on location to get the at an affordable rate which’s GlockCNC. Updating to a ISO20 or BT30 is ideal for the mill. Choosing a 5C is ideal for the lathes. Naturally, you would need to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is also a bonus. The accessibility of tooling for each of these models is outstanding. For 5C collet sets, you can get excellent quality from Hardinge.
Sherline headstocks and parts come in a range of models from the factory. Typically ER16 and MT1. Both of which are very little. Sherline also provides WW collet sets for extremely small work. Generally watchmakers and clockmakers utilize the WW collets. Most choose 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 barely like the ER16. An R8 spindle with a low profile would be best. It provides one of the most versatility and lots of tool options. 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 likewise come in CNC, manual and CNC prepared variations. Just recently, they have actually included ballscrew variations for sale. This is far much 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 Graniteville.
Taig also provides lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines primary competition. In fact, you can find a lot of videos and articles describing Taig vs Sherline. The Taig items offer much more stiff methods and usually more “heavy duty” overall. The Taig motors are quite weak, much like the Sherline motors. A high quality brushless motor can make the machine appear like a completely different mill or lathe. Taig also provides a good CNC all set mill and lathe. You can likewise select their digital CNC system which uses closed-looped steppers and Mach3 software. The Taig spindles have the very same problems 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 offer a ballscrew choice for their mill and lathe. Plus, the offer a “gang tool” lathe. The drawback with both produces is the absence of major upgrades.
Sherline uses many parts and accessories, but very little to make it a much better machine. To start with, they headstock uses bad quality bearings and the bearings are too small. This implies the spindle itself requires to be small. A spindle with really little mass implies the lathe or mill the surface quality will not be as excellent and subject to vibration issues. For example, they offer many lathe accessories, however you can’t get a 5C headstock or ER25, ER32 or ER40. Plus, the travel through hole needs to be small because the bearings are small. There is a similar problem with the mill. You can only use ER16 collets and this restricts its use. Of course those in Graniteville, South Carolina 29829 may have different needs.
There are other machine alternatives too. You can also buy from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, along with other providers that use Chinese mills and lathes. Naturally the quality isn’t real great. Many wind up either really dissatisfied or doing a lot of modifications to get the machine to do what they desire. Outstanding upgrades are ballscrews, upgraded brushless motor, encoder for threading and so on.
If you desire to opt for a CNC machine, your best option is the Centroid Acorn. The software and hardware is far much 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 offers constant speed for turning applications. Mach3 and Mach4 were the standard for many years. However, they were cumbersome at finest and truly only targeted at amature usage. Centroid is a well established commercial manufacture of mills. A number of which are 5 axis machines. The best servos to use 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 much better jaw chuck for the lathe? Many complain that the small chucks will not hold steel for cutting. The part will simply fall out. On alternative is to purchase a headstock with a jaw chuck adapter built in. This can open up more choices for 5″ or 6″ chuck. Specifically if you opt for bigger bearings.