Sherline & Taig Lathe & Mill Upgrades, Reviews for Lawrenceville, GA 30042
Numerous are interested in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the Lawrenceville, GA. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, interest numerous individuals. There’s just on location to get the at an affordable price and that’s GlockCNC. Upgrading to a ISO20 or BT30 is perfect for the mill. Going with a 5C is ideal for the lathes. Of course, you would require to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is also a bonus offer. The availability of tooling for each of these designs is excellent. For 5C collet sets, you can get very good quality from Hardinge.
Sherline headstocks and parts been available in a range of designs from the factory. Normally 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. The majority of prefer ER25, ER32 or perhaps ER40 collet sizes with a bigger spindle travel through hole. The 5C collet for the Sherline lathe would be the very best. For Sherline mills, many truly do not care for the MT1 and barely like the ER16. An R8 spindle with a low profile would be best. It provides the most versatility and many 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 also come in CNC, handbook and CNC ready versions. Just recently, they have included ballscrew versions for sale. This is far much 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 Lawrenceville.
Taig likewise provides lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines primary competition. In reality, you can find a lot of videos and short articles describing Taig vs Sherline. The Taig products offer much more stiff ways and typically more “strong” overall. The Taig motors are quite weak, much like the Sherline motors. A high quality brushless motor can make the machine seem like a completely various mill or lathe. Taig likewise offers a great CNC ready mill and lathe. You can likewise opt for their digital CNC system which utilizes closed-looped steppers and Mach3 software application. The Taig spindles have the very same issues as the Sherline. They are far too small. The only exception is the 5C collet headstock design they provide. We will do a review of the 5C in the future. The good thing is that they now provide a ballscrew choice for their mill and lathe. Plus, the offer a “gang tool” lathe. The downside with both manufactures is the lack of severe upgrades.
Sherline provides lots of parts and attachments, however not much to make it a better machine. To begin with, they headstock uses poor quality bearings and the bearings are too little. This suggests the spindle itself needs to be little. A spindle with very little mass implies the lathe or mill the surface quality will not be as good and based on vibration issues. For example, they provide lots of lathe devices, but you can’t get a 5C headstock or ER25, ER32 or ER40. Plus, the go through hole needs to be small since the bearings are little. There is a comparable problem with the mill. You can only use ER16 collets and this limits its usage. Of course those in Lawrenceville, Georgia 30042 may have different needs.
There are other machine alternatives 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 excellent. Many wind up either very disappointed or doing a lot of modifications to get the machine to do what they desire. Exceptional 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 application and hardware is far much better than Mach3 or much of the hardware alternatives in the market. You can do rigid tapping and threading if you have an encoder. Plus, it uses consistent speed for turning applications. Mach3 and Mach4 were the standard for many years. However, they were clunky at best and actually only aimed at amature usage. Centroid is a well established business manufacture of mills. Much of which are 5 axis devices. 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 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? Lots of grumble that the small chucks won’t hold steel for cutting. The part will just fall out. On option 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 go with bigger bearings.