Sherline & Taig Lathe & Mill Upgrades, Reviews for El Paso, TX 88563
Many have an interest in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the El Paso, TX. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, attract numerous individuals. There’s just on location to get the at a reasonable cost which’s GlockCNC. Updating to a ISO20 or BT30 is perfect for the mill. Opting for a 5C is perfect for the lathes. Obviously, you would require to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is likewise a benefit. The availability of tooling for each of these designs is outstanding. For 5C collet sets, you can get very good quality from Hardinge.
Sherline headstocks and parts can be found in a range of designs from the factory. Normally ER16 and MT1. Both of which are very little. Sherline also uses WW collet sets for very tiny work. Primarily watchmakers and clockmakers use the WW collets. Many choose ER25, ER32 or perhaps ER40 collet sizes with a bigger spindle travel through hole. The 5C collet for the Sherline lathe would be the best. For Sherline mills, many really do not care for the MT1 and hardly like the ER16. An R8 spindle with a low profile would be best. It offers the most versatility and many tool options. You can discover 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, manual and CNC ready versions. Recently, they have added ballscrew versions for sale. This is far much better than the older leadscrew type. Browse the web if you want an evaluation or comparison of ballscrews compared to leadscrews. There are suppliers near El Paso.
Taig likewise uses lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines main competitors. In fact, you can find a lot of videos and short articles referring to Taig vs Sherline. The Taig products use a lot more stiff ways and typically more “heavy duty” overall. The Taig motors are quite weak, much like the Sherline motors. A high quality brushless motor can make the machine look like a totally different mill or lathe. Taig also uses a great CNC ready mill and lathe. You can likewise go with their digital CNC system which uses closed-looped steppers and Mach3 software application. The Taig spindles have the exact same problems 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 nice thing is that they now offer a ballscrew alternative for their mill and lathe. Plus, the offer a “gang tool” lathe. The drawback with both makes is the lack of serious upgrades.
Sherline offers many parts and attachments, but not much to make it a much better machine. To start with, they headstock uses bad quality bearings and the bearings are too small. This indicates the spindle itself needs 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 instance, they use many lathe accessories, however you can’t get a 5C headstock or ER25, ER32 or ER40. Plus, the go through hole has to be little because the bearings are small. There is a comparable problem with the mill. You can just utilize ER16 collets and this limits its use. Of course those in El Paso, Texas 88563 may have different needs.
There are other machine alternatives too. You can likewise buy from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, in addition to other providers that use Chinese mills and lathes. Obviously the quality isn’t real good. Lots of wind up either extremely dissatisfied or doing a lot of modifications to get the machine to do what they want. Exceptional upgrades are ballscrews, updated brushless motor, encoder for threading and so on.
If you want to choose a CNC machine, your best bet is the Centroid Acorn. The software application and hardware is far better than Mach3 or much of the hardware alternatives in the market. You can do rigid tapping and threading if you have an encoder. Plus, it offers consistent speed for turning applications. Mach3 and Mach4 were the requirement for several years. However, they were clunky at finest and really only focused on amature usage. Centroid is a well established commercial manufacture of mills. A lot of which are 5 axis makers. 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 better jaw chuck for the lathe? Lots of grumble that the small chucks will not hold steel for cutting. The part will simply fall out. On option is to purchase a headstock with a jaw chuck adapter integrated in. This can open up more options for 5″ or 6″ chuck. Especially if you choose bigger bearings.