Sherline & Taig Lathe & Mill Upgrades, Reviews for Cairo, WV 26337
Many have an interest in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the Cairo, WV. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, attract lots of people. There’s only on location to get the at a sensible cost which’s GlockCNC. Updating to a ISO20 or BT30 is ideal for the mill. Choosing a 5C is perfect for the lathes. Naturally, you would require to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is also a perk. The schedule of tooling for each of these models is excellent. For 5C collet sets, you can get very good quality from Hardinge.
Sherline headstocks and parts can be found in a variety of models from the factory. Generally ER16 and MT1. Both of which are very small. Sherline also offers WW collet sets for really small work. Generally watchmakers and clockmakers utilize the WW collets. Many choose ER25, ER32 or even ER40 collet sizes with a bigger spindle travel through hole. The 5C collet for the Sherline lathe would be the best. For Sherline mills, the majority of actually do not care for the MT1 and barely like the ER16. An R8 spindle with a low profile would be best. It offers one of the most flexibility and numerous tool options. You can find lots of 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, manual and CNC prepared variations. Recently, they have included ballscrew variations for sale. This is far much better than the older leadscrew type. Browse the web if you desire a review or contrast of ballscrews compared to leadscrews. There are suppliers near Cairo.
Taig also offers lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines primary competitors. In truth, you can find a lot of videos and short articles referring to Taig vs Sherline. The Taig products offer far more stiff ways and normally more “sturdy” in general. The Taig motors are pretty weak, just like the Sherline motors. A high quality brushless motor can make the machine look like an absolutely different mill or lathe. Taig also provides a great CNC all set 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 very same issues as the Sherline. They are far too little. The only exception is the 5C collet headstock design they use. We will do an evaluation of the 5C in the future. The great thing is that they now provide a ballscrew choice for their mill and lathe. Plus, the deal a “gang tool” lathe. The disadvantage with both makes is the lack of serious upgrades.
Sherline uses lots of parts and attachments, however not much to make it a much better machine. To begin with, they headstock usages bad quality bearings and the bearings are too little. This means the spindle itself needs to be small. A spindle with extremely little mass implies the lathe or mill the finish quality won’t be as great and based on vibration issues. For instance, they offer many lathe devices, but you can’t get a 5C headstock or ER25, ER32 or ER40. Plus, the pass through hole needs to be little because the bearings are small. There is a comparable concern with the mill. You can only use ER16 collets and this restricts its usage. Of course those in Cairo, West Virginia 26337 may have different needs.
There are other machine choices too. You can likewise purchase from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, together with other suppliers that use Chinese mills and lathes. Obviously the quality isn’t real great. Numerous wind up either extremely dissatisfied or doing a lot of modifications to get the machine to do what they desire. Excellent upgrades are ballscrews, updated brushless motor, encoder for threading and so on.
If you prefer to choose a CNC machine, your best choice 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 rigid tapping and threading if you have an encoder. Plus, it provides constant speed for turning applications. Mach3 and Mach4 were the requirement for many years. Nevertheless, they were clunky at best and really only targeted at amature use. Centroid is a well recognized industrial manufacture of mills. Much of which are 5 axis devices. The very best servos to utilize for CNC on the Sherline or Taig are either DMM, Clearpath or GlockCNC brands. 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 better jaw chuck for the lathe? Numerous grumble that the small chucks will not hold steel for cutting. The part will just fall out. On alternative is to purchase a headstock with a jaw chuck adapter integrated in. This can open up more alternatives for 5″ or 6″ chuck. Particularly if you go with larger bearings.