Sherline & Taig Lathe & Mill Upgrades, Reviews for Hugo, CO 80821
Many have an interest in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the Hugo, CO. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, attract lots of people. There’s just on place to get the at a reasonable cost and that’s GlockCNC. Updating to a ISO20 or BT30 is perfect for the mill. Going with a 5C is ideal for the lathes. Of course, 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 designs from the factory. Generally ER16 and MT1. Both of which are very little. Sherline also provides WW collet sets for very tiny work. Generally watchmakers and clockmakers utilize the WW collets. Most choose ER25, ER32 or even ER40 collet sizes with a bigger spindle go through hole. The 5C collet for the Sherline lathe would be the best. For Sherline mills, most actually 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 versatility and lots of tool choices. You can find many reviews 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 all set variations. Recently, they have actually added ballscrew versions for sale. This is far 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 Hugo.
Taig also provides lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines main competitors. In truth, you can find a lot of videos and short articles describing Taig vs Sherline. The Taig items use much more stiff ways and generally 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 different mill or lathe. Taig also uses a good CNC all set mill and lathe. You can also opt for their digital CNC system which uses closed-looped steppers and Mach3 software application. The Taig spindles have the same issues as the Sherline. They are far too little. The only exception is the 5C collet headstock design they provide. We will do an evaluation of the 5C in the future. The good thing is that they now provide a ballscrew alternative for their mill and lathe. Plus, the offer a “gang tool” lathe. The downside with both manufactures is the lack of serious upgrades.
Sherline provides many parts and accessories, but not much to make it a better machine. To begin with, they headstock uses poor quality bearings and the bearings are too little. This implies the spindle itself requires to be small. A spindle with extremely little mass indicates the lathe or mill the surface quality won’t be as good and subject to vibration problems. For instance, they provide numerous lathe devices, however you can’t get a 5C headstock or ER25, ER32 or ER40. Plus, the go through hole needs to be little due to the fact that the bearings are small. There is a similar problem with the mill. You can only use ER16 collets and this restricts its usage. Of course those in Hugo, Colorado 80821 may have different needs.
There are other machine choices too. You can likewise purchase from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, together with other suppliers that use Chinese mills and lathes. Obviously the quality isn’t real great. Many end up either extremely disappointed or doing a great deal of modifications to get the machine to do what they want. Outstanding upgrades are ballscrews, updated brushless motor, encoder for threading and so on.
If you prefer to choose a CNC machine, your best choice is the Centroid Acorn. The software and hardware is far much 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 constant 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 commercial manufacture of mills. A lot 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 a powerful 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 won’t hold steel for cutting. The part will simply fall out. On choice 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.