Sherline & Taig Lathe & Mill Upgrades, Reviews for Montgomery, AL 36132
Many have an interest in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the Montgomery, AL. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, appeals to many people. There’s only on location to get the at an affordable cost and that’s GlockCNC. Updating to a ISO20 or BT30 is ideal for the mill. Choosing a 5C is perfect for the lathes. Of course, you would require to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is likewise a perk. The accessibility of tooling for each of these designs is outstanding. For 5C collet sets, you can get very good quality from Hardinge.
Sherline headstocks and parts can be found in a variety of designs from the factory. Normally ER16 and MT1. Both of which are very little. Sherline also offers WW collet sets for really small work. Generally watchmakers and clockmakers utilize the WW collets. Most choose ER25, ER32 or even ER40 collet sizes with a larger spindle pass through hole. The 5C collet for the Sherline lathe would be the very 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 provides the most flexibility and many tool choices. You can find lots of 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, manual and CNC prepared variations. Recently, they have included ballscrew variations for sale. This is far better than the older leadscrew type. Browse the web if you want an evaluation or comparison of ballscrews compared to leadscrews. There are suppliers near Montgomery.
Taig also uses lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines main competition. In fact, you can find a great deal of videos and short articles referring to Taig vs Sherline. The Taig products offer far more rigid methods and usually more “heavy duty” overall. 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 uses a nice CNC prepared mill and lathe. You can likewise choose 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 model they provide. We will do an evaluation of the 5C in the future. The nice thing is that they now use a ballscrew alternative for their mill and lathe. Plus, the offer a “gang tool” lathe. The disadvantage with both produces is the lack of severe upgrades.
Sherline offers lots of parts and attachments, but not much to make it a much better machine. To start with, they headstock usages bad quality bearings and the bearings are too small. This suggests the spindle itself needs to be small. A spindle with really little mass means the lathe or mill the finish quality won’t be as excellent and based on vibration problems. For instance, they use lots of lathe devices, but you can’t get a 5C headstock or ER25, ER32 or ER40. Plus, the pass through hole has to be small since the bearings are little. There is a comparable issue with the mill. You can just use ER16 collets and this restricts its usage. Of course those in Montgomery, Alabama 36132 may have different needs.
Video: Taig CNC in Montgomery
There are other machine choices too. You can also purchase from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, in addition to other providers that offer Chinese mills and lathes. Obviously the quality isn’t genuine great. Many end up either very dissatisfied or doing a great deal of modifications to get the machine to do what they desire. Excellent upgrades are ballscrews, updated brushless motor, encoder for threading and so on.
If you want to choose a CNC machine, your best bet is the Centroid Acorn. The software application and hardware is far much better than Mach3 or many of the hardware options in the market. You can do stiff 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 targeted at amature use. Centroid is a well established business manufacture of mills. A lot of which are 5 axis makers. The very best servos to utilize 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 an effective machine. We will likewise produce reviews of the Taig CNC mill and Sherline CNC mill utilizing the Acorn hardware.
What about a better jaw chuck for the lathe? Numerous grumble that the little 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 up more choices for 5″ or 6″ chuck. Specifically if you opt for larger bearings.