Sherline & Taig Lathe & Mill Upgrades, Reviews for West Lafayette, OH 43845
Many are interested in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the West Lafayette, OH. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, interest lots of individuals. There’s just on place to get the at an affordable price which’s GlockCNC. Upgrading to a ISO20 or BT30 is ideal for the mill. Opting for a 5C is ideal for the lathes. Of course, you would need to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is also a benefit. The accessibility of tooling for each of these models is exceptional. For 5C collet sets, you can get great quality from Hardinge.
Sherline headstocks and parts been available in a range of designs from the factory. Typically ER16 and MT1. Both of which are really little. Sherline also provides WW collet sets for extremely small work. Generally watchmakers and clockmakers utilize the WW collets. A lot of choose ER25, ER32 or even ER40 collet sizes with a larger spindle travel through hole. The 5C collet for the Sherline lathe would be the very best. For Sherline mills, many actually don’t care for the MT1 and barely like the ER16. An R8 spindle with a low profile would be best. It uses the most versatility and many tool choices. You can find numerous reviews on both the lathe and the mill. Popular designs are the 2000, 5400, 4000 and 4500 in metric and inch. The also come in CNC, handbook and CNC prepared variations. Just recently, they have added ballscrew variations for sale. This is far better than the older leadscrew type. Browse the web if you want a review or contrast of ballscrews compared to leadscrews. There are suppliers near West Lafayette.
Taig likewise offers lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines main competitors. In fact, you can discover a great deal of videos and posts referring to Taig vs Sherline. The Taig products provide far more stiff methods and typically more “heavy duty” 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 completely various mill or lathe. Taig also provides a good CNC ready mill and lathe. You can also select their digital CNC system which utilizes closed-looped steppers and Mach3 software. The Taig spindles have the very same problems 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 great thing is that they now provide a ballscrew option for their mill and lathe. Plus, the deal a “gang tool” lathe. The drawback with both produces is the lack of major upgrades.
Sherline provides lots of parts and accessories, however not much to make it a better machine. To start with, they headstock uses poor quality bearings and the bearings are too small. This means the spindle itself needs to be little. A spindle with really little mass implies the lathe or mill the finish quality will not be as excellent and based on vibration issues. For example, they provide lots of lathe accessories, but 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 concern with the mill. You can only utilize ER16 collets and this restricts its usage. Of course those in West Lafayette, Ohio 43845 may have different needs.
Video: Taig CNC in West Lafayette
There are other machine alternatives too. You can also buy from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, along with other providers that use Chinese mills and lathes. Obviously the quality isn’t real good. Lots of 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 want to choose a CNC machine, your best option is the Centroid Acorn. The software application and hardware is far better than Mach3 or many of the hardware alternatives in the market. You can do rigid tapping and threading if you have an encoder. Plus, it offers continuous speed for turning applications. Mach3 and Mach4 were the requirement for many years. However, they were clunky at finest and truly only aimed at amature usage. Centroid is a well recognized industrial manufacture of mills. Many of which are 5 axis makers. The best servos to use for CNC on the Sherline or Taig are either DMM, Clearpath or GlockCNC brands. Integrate that with the Centroid Acorn and you will have a powerful machine. We will likewise 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? Lots of complain that the small chucks won’t 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 more options for 5″ or 6″ chuck. Specifically if you go with bigger bearings.