Sherline & Taig Lathe & Mill Upgrades, Reviews for Washington, DC 20318
Lots of are interested in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the Washington, DC. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, attract lots of individuals. There’s only on location to get the at a reasonable cost and that’s GlockCNC. Updating to a ISO20 or BT30 is ideal for the mill. Choosing 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 offer. The accessibility of tooling for each of these models is exceptional. 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. Generally ER16 and MT1. Both of which are very little. Sherline also provides WW collet sets for extremely small work. Primarily watchmakers and clockmakers utilize the WW collets. A lot of prefer ER25, ER32 or even ER40 collet sizes with a bigger spindle pass through hole. The 5C collet for the Sherline lathe would be the best. For Sherline mills, the majority of actually don’t 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 numerous tool choices. You can find numerous 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, manual and CNC ready versions. Recently, they have included ballscrew versions for sale. This is far better than the older leadscrew type. Search the web if you desire an evaluation or comparison of ballscrews compared to leadscrews. There are suppliers near Washington.
Taig also provides lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines primary competition. In truth, you can discover a lot of videos and posts describing Taig vs Sherline. The Taig items provide much more stiff ways and typically more “sturdy” overall. The Taig motors are pretty weak, just like the Sherline motors. A high quality brushless motor can make the machine look like a totally different mill or lathe. Taig also provides a good CNC ready mill and lathe. You can also select their digital CNC system which uses closed-looped steppers and Mach3 software application. The Taig spindles have the exact same issues as the Sherline. They are far too little. The only exception is the 5C collet headstock design they offer. We will do an evaluation of the 5C in the future. The good thing is that they now offer a ballscrew alternative for their mill and lathe. Plus, the offer a “gang tool” lathe. The disadvantage with both makes is the absence of major upgrades.
Sherline provides numerous parts and accessories, however very little to make it a much better machine. To begin with, they headstock uses bad quality bearings and the bearings are too little. This indicates the spindle itself needs to be small. A spindle with really little mass suggests the lathe or mill the finish quality won’t be as great and subject to vibration issues. For example, they provide numerous 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 similar concern with the mill. You can just use ER16 collets and this limits its usage. Of course those in Washington, District Of Columbia 20318 may have different needs.
There are other machine options too. You can also purchase from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, together with other providers that use Chinese mills and lathes. Obviously the quality isn’t real excellent. Numerous end up either very dissatisfied or doing a great deal 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 go with a CNC machine, your best choice is the Centroid Acorn. The software and hardware is far much better than Mach3 or much of the hardware options in the market. You can do stiff tapping and threading if you have an encoder. Plus, it provides consistent speed for turning applications. Mach3 and Mach4 were the requirement for several years. However, they were cumbersome at finest and truly just focused on amature use. Centroid is a well established commercial manufacture of mills. A lot of which are 5 axis machines. The very best servos to utilize for CNC on the Sherline or Taig are either DMM, Clearpath or GlockCNC brand names. Combine 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 much better jaw chuck for the lathe? Numerous 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 options for 5″ or 6″ chuck. Specifically if you opt for larger bearings.