Sherline & Taig Lathe & Mill Upgrades, Reviews for Saint Louis, MO 63122
Many have an interest in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the Saint Louis, MO. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, interest lots of individuals. There’s only on location to get the at a reasonable price and that’s GlockCNC. Upgrading to a ISO20 or BT30 is perfect 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 also a benefit. The schedule of tooling for each of these designs is exceptional. For 5C collet sets, you can get very good quality from Hardinge.
Sherline headstocks and parts come in a variety of designs from the factory. Generally ER16 and MT1. Both of which are very little. Sherline likewise offers WW collet sets for extremely tiny work. Primarily watchmakers and clockmakers utilize the WW collets. Many prefer ER25, ER32 or even ER40 collet sizes with a larger spindle travel through hole. The 5C collet for the Sherline lathe would be the best. For Sherline mills, a lot of really do not care for the MT1 and hardly like the ER16. An R8 spindle with a low profile would be best. It offers one of the most versatility and many tool options. You can find numerous 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 versions. Recently, they have added ballscrew versions for sale. This is far better than the older leadscrew type. Search the web if you want a review or comparison of ballscrews compared to leadscrews. There are suppliers near Saint Louis.
Taig likewise provides lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines primary competitors. In fact, you can discover a great deal of videos and posts referring to Taig vs Sherline. The Taig products offer far more rigid ways and generally more “strong” in general. The Taig motors are quite weak, similar to the Sherline motors. A high quality brushless motor can make the machine appear like a completely various mill or lathe. Taig likewise uses a great CNC prepared mill and lathe. You can likewise go with their digital CNC system which utilizes closed-looped steppers and Mach3 software. The Taig spindles have the exact same issues as the Sherline. They are far too small. The only exception is the 5C collet headstock model they use. We will do a review of the 5C in the future. The nice thing is that they now use a ballscrew option 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 numerous parts and accessories, but very little to make it a better machine. To start with, they headstock uses bad quality bearings and the bearings are too little. This means the spindle itself needs to be little. A spindle with very little mass suggests the lathe or mill the surface quality will not be as great and subject to vibration issues. For example, they provide numerous lathe devices, however you can’t get a 5C headstock or ER25, ER32 or ER40. Plus, the travel through hole needs to be small due to the fact that 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 Saint Louis, Missouri 63122 may have different needs.
There are other machine options too. You can also buy from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, in addition to other suppliers that provide Chinese mills and lathes. Of course the quality isn’t genuine good. Numerous wind up either extremely disappointed or doing a lot of modifications to get the machine to do what they want. Excellent upgrades are ballscrews, upgraded brushless motor, encoder for threading and so on.
If you desire to opt for a CNC machine, your best choice is the Centroid Acorn. The software and hardware is far much better than Mach3 or a lot 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 several years. However, they were clunky at best and actually only aimed at amature use. Centroid is a well established industrial manufacture of mills. A number of which are 5 axis devices. The 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 a powerful machine. We will also produce evaluations of the Taig CNC mill and Sherline CNC mill using the Acorn hardware.
What about a better jaw chuck for the lathe? Many complain that the small chucks won’t hold steel for cutting. The part will just fall out. On choice is to purchase a headstock with a jaw chuck adapter integrated in. This can open up more choices for 5″ or 6″ chuck. Specifically if you choose larger bearings.