Sherline & Taig Lathe & Mill Upgrades, Reviews for New Bern, NC 28562
Numerous have an interest in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the New Bern, NC. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, attract lots of people. There’s only on location to get the at a reasonable rate and that’s GlockCNC. Updating to a ISO20 or BT30 is ideal for the mill. Going with a 5C is perfect for the lathes. Obviously, you would need to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is also a bonus. The schedule of tooling for each of these designs is outstanding. For 5C collet sets, you can get great quality from Hardinge.
Sherline headstocks and parts come in a variety of designs from the factory. Normally ER16 and MT1. Both of which are really small. Sherline also uses WW collet sets for very tiny work. Generally watchmakers and clockmakers utilize the WW collets. Many choose ER25, ER32 and even ER40 collet sizes with a larger spindle go through hole. The 5C collet for the Sherline lathe would be the very 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 offers the most flexibility and numerous tool options. You can find numerous evaluations on both the lathe and the mill. Popular models are the 2000, 5400, 4000 and 4500 in metric and inch. The also can be found in CNC, manual and CNC all set versions. Recently, they have included ballscrew versions for sale. This is far better than the older leadscrew type. Browse the web if you want an evaluation or contrast of ballscrews compared to leadscrews. There are suppliers near New Bern.
Taig likewise uses lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines main competition. In truth, you can find a lot of videos and short articles describing Taig vs Sherline. The Taig items provide much more stiff ways and normally more “sturdy” in general. The Taig motors are pretty weak, similar to the Sherline motors. A high quality brushless motor can make the machine seem like a totally different mill or lathe. Taig likewise uses a nice CNC ready mill and lathe. You can likewise select their digital CNC system which utilizes closed-looped steppers and Mach3 software application. The Taig spindles have the exact same problems 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 nice thing is that they now provide a ballscrew option for their mill and lathe. Plus, the offer a “gang tool” lathe. The downside with both makes is the absence of major upgrades.
Sherline offers lots of parts and attachments, however not much to make it a much better machine. To begin with, they headstock uses bad quality bearings and the bearings are too little. This suggests the spindle itself requires to be small. A spindle with very little mass suggests the lathe or mill the finish quality will not be as great and subject to vibration problems. For instance, they offer numerous lathe accessories, but you can’t get a 5C headstock or ER25, ER32 or ER40. Plus, the go through hole has to be small because the bearings are small. There is a similar problem with the mill. You can just utilize ER16 collets and this restricts its usage. Of course those in New Bern, North Carolina 28562 may have different needs.
Video: Sherline CNC in New Bern
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. Of course the quality isn’t real excellent. Numerous end up either really disappointed 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 desire to go with a CNC machine, your best choice is the Centroid Acorn. The software and hardware is far better than Mach3 or much of the hardware choices in the market. You can do rigid tapping and threading if you have an encoder. Plus, it uses constant speed for turning applications. Mach3 and Mach4 were the standard for many years. Nevertheless, they were clunky at finest and truly just focused on amature use. Centroid is a well established commercial manufacture of mills. Much of which are 5 axis machines. The best servos to use 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 also produce reviews of the Taig CNC mill and Sherline CNC mill utilizing the Acorn hardware.
What about a much better jaw chuck for the lathe? Many grumble that the small chucks will not hold steel for cutting. The part will simply fall out. On alternative is to buy a headstock with a jaw chuck adapter integrated in. This can open up more alternatives for 5″ or 6″ chuck. Particularly if you go with larger bearings.