Sherline & Taig CNC Mill & Lathe Upgrades, Reviews for Mound City, KS 66056
Numerous are interested in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the Mound City, KS. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, interest lots of 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 ideal for the lathes. Naturally, you would require to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is likewise a benefit. 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 come in a variety of models from the factory. Typically ER16 and MT1. Both of which are very small. Sherline also provides WW collet sets for extremely small work. Primarily watchmakers and clockmakers use the WW collets. A lot of prefer ER25, ER32 or perhaps ER40 collet sizes with a bigger spindle go 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 hardly like the ER16. An R8 spindle with a low profile would be best. It uses one of the most flexibility and lots of tool options. 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 come in CNC, handbook and CNC ready variations. Just recently, they have added ballscrew variations for sale. This is far 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 Mound City.
Taig also uses lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines main competition. In fact, you can discover a lot of videos and posts referring to Taig vs Sherline. The Taig items use far more rigid methods and usually more “heavy duty” overall. The Taig motors are quite weak, just like the Sherline motors. A high quality brushless motor can make the machine look like a completely various mill or lathe. Taig likewise offers a great CNC all set mill and lathe. You can likewise opt for their digital CNC system which uses closed-looped steppers and Mach3 software. The Taig spindles have the exact 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 nice thing is that they now provide a ballscrew alternative for their mill and lathe. Plus, the deal a “gang tool” lathe. The drawback with both manufactures is the lack of serious upgrades.
Sherline uses numerous parts and attachments, but not much to make it a much better machine. To start with, they headstock uses bad quality bearings and the bearings are too little. This implies the spindle itself requires to be little. A spindle with really little mass indicates the lathe or mill the finish quality won’t be as great and based on vibration problems. For example, they offer lots of lathe devices, but you can’t get a 5C headstock or ER25, ER32 or ER40. Plus, the pass through hole needs to be little since the bearings are little. There is a comparable problem with the mill. You can only use ER16 collets and this restricts its use. Of course those in Mound City, Kansas 66056 may have different needs.
Video: Taig CNC in Mound City
There are other machine choices too. You can likewise purchase from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, in addition to other providers that provide Chinese mills and lathes. Obviously the quality isn’t genuine great. Numerous wind up either really dissatisfied or doing a lot of modifications to get the machine to do what they desire. Exceptional 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 application and hardware is far better than Mach3 or a number 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. However, they were cumbersome at best and actually only focused on amature usage. Centroid is a well recognized industrial manufacture of mills. Much 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 brands. Integrate 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 utilizing the Acorn hardware.
What about a better jaw chuck for the lathe? Lots of grumble that the little 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. Particularly if you opt for larger bearings.