Sherline & Taig Lathe & Mill Upgrades, Reviews for South Grafton, MA 01560
Lots of have an interest in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the South Grafton, MA. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, interest many individuals. There’s only on location to get the at an affordable price and that’s GlockCNC. Upgrading to a ISO20 or BT30 is ideal for the mill. Opting for a 5C is perfect for the lathes. Obviously, you would need to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is likewise a perk. The accessibility of tooling for each of these designs is excellent. For 5C collet sets, you can get great quality from Hardinge.
Sherline headstocks and parts come in a range of designs from the factory. Generally ER16 and MT1. Both of which are extremely small. Sherline also uses WW collet sets for very tiny work. Generally watchmakers and clockmakers utilize the WW collets. A lot of choose ER25, ER32 and even ER40 collet sizes with a larger spindle pass through hole. The 5C collet for the Sherline lathe would be the best. For Sherline mills, the majority of truly do not care for the MT1 and barely like the ER16. An R8 spindle with a low profile would be best. It offers the most versatility and many tool choices. You can find many evaluations on both the lathe and the mill. Popular designs are the 2000, 5400, 4000 and 4500 in metric and inch. The also can be found in CNC, handbook and CNC ready variations. Recently, they have included ballscrew versions for sale. This is far much better than the older leadscrew type. Search the internet if you desire an evaluation or comparison of ballscrews compared to leadscrews. There are suppliers near South Grafton.
Taig also uses lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines primary competitors. In truth, you can find a great deal of videos and articles describing Taig vs Sherline. The Taig items use a lot 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 seem like a totally various mill or lathe. Taig likewise uses a great CNC prepared mill and lathe. You can also select their digital CNC system which uses 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 provide. We will do an evaluation of the 5C in the future. The great thing is that they now offer a ballscrew choice for their mill and lathe. Plus, the deal a “gang tool” lathe. The drawback with both manufactures is the lack of severe upgrades.
Sherline provides lots of parts and accessories, however not much to make it a better machine. To begin with, they headstock usages poor quality bearings and the bearings are too little. This implies the spindle itself needs to be little. A spindle with really little mass means the lathe or mill the finish quality won’t be as good and subject to vibration issues. For instance, 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 little due to the fact that the bearings are little. There is a similar issue with the mill. You can only use ER16 collets and this restricts its use. Of course those in South Grafton, Massachusetts 01560 may have different needs.
Video: Sherline CNC in South Grafton
There are other machine choices too. You can also purchase from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, along with other providers that use Chinese mills and lathes. Obviously the quality isn’t real excellent. Many wind up either really dissatisfied or doing a lot of modifications to get the machine to do what they want. Outstanding upgrades are ballscrews, updated 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 lot of the hardware choices in the market. You can do stiff tapping and threading if you have an encoder. Plus, it offers constant speed for turning applications. Mach3 and Mach4 were the standard for many years. Nevertheless, they were clunky at best and truly only aimed at amature usage. Centroid is a well established commercial manufacture of mills. Many of which are 5 axis makers. 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 an effective machine. We will also produce evaluations of the Taig CNC mill and Sherline CNC mill utilizing the Acorn hardware.
What about a much better jaw chuck for the lathe? Numerous complain that the small chucks will not hold steel for cutting. The part will simply fall out. On option is to buy a headstock with a jaw chuck adapter integrated in. This can open more options for 5″ or 6″ chuck. Particularly if you go with larger bearings.