Sherline & Taig Lathe & Mill Upgrades, Reviews for Arrington, VA 22922
Numerous have an interest in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the Arrington, VA. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, attract lots of people. There’s just on location to get the at a reasonable rate which’s GlockCNC. Upgrading to a ISO20 or BT30 is perfect 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 benefit. The schedule of tooling for each of these designs is exceptional. For 5C collet sets, you can get excellent 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 also offers WW collet sets for extremely tiny work. Mainly watchmakers and clockmakers utilize the WW collets. Many prefer ER25, ER32 or 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, many truly don’t care for the MT1 and hardly like the ER16. An R8 spindle with a low profile would be best. It uses one of the most flexibility and lots of tool options. You can find many reviews on both the lathe and the mill. Popular designs are the 2000, 5400, 4000 and 4500 in metric and inch. The likewise can be found in CNC, manual and CNC all set versions. Recently, they have actually included ballscrew versions for sale. This is far better than the older leadscrew type. Search the web if you desire an evaluation or contrast of ballscrews compared to leadscrews. There are suppliers near Arrington.
Taig also uses lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines primary competition. In reality, you can find a lot of videos and short articles describing Taig vs Sherline. The Taig products use much more rigid methods and typically more “strong” overall. The Taig motors are pretty weak, similar to the Sherline motors. A high quality brushless motor can make the machine appear like a totally various mill or lathe. Taig also offers a great CNC all set 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 issues as the Sherline. They are far too small. The only exception is the 5C collet headstock model they offer. We will do an evaluation of the 5C in the future. The good thing is that they now use a ballscrew option for their mill and lathe. Plus, the offer a “gang tool” lathe. The drawback with both makes is the lack of major upgrades.
Sherline provides lots of parts and accessories, however not much to make it a much better machine. To start with, they headstock usages poor quality bearings and the bearings are too small. This indicates the spindle itself requires to be small. A spindle with very little mass indicates the lathe or mill the finish quality won’t be as good and subject to vibration problems. For example, they use numerous lathe accessories, however you can’t get a 5C headstock or ER25, ER32 or ER40. Plus, the go through hole needs to be little because the bearings are little. There is a comparable concern with the mill. You can just utilize ER16 collets and this restricts its usage. Of course those in Arrington, Virginia 22922 may have different needs.
Video: Taig CNC in Arrington
There are other machine choices too. You can also buy from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, in addition to other suppliers that provide Chinese mills and lathes. Obviously the quality isn’t genuine 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 go with 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 options in the market. You can do rigid tapping and threading if you have an encoder. Plus, it provides continuous speed for turning applications. Mach3 and Mach4 were the requirement for several years. Nevertheless, they were clunky at best and actually only targeted at amature usage. Centroid is a well recognized industrial manufacture of mills. A lot of which are 5 axis devices. The very best servos to use 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 an effective machine. We will also produce evaluations of the Taig CNC mill and Sherline CNC mill utilizing the Acorn hardware.
What about a better jaw chuck for the lathe? Lots of grumble that the small chucks won’t hold steel for cutting. The part will just fall out. On choice is to buy a headstock with a jaw chuck adapter integrated in. This can open more options for 5″ or 6″ chuck. Especially if you choose bigger bearings.