Sherline & Taig Lathe & Mill Upgrades, Reviews for Havre De Grace, MD 21078
Numerous have an interest in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the Havre De Grace, MD. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, interest lots of individuals. There’s just on place to get the at a sensible rate which’s GlockCNC. Updating to a ISO20 or BT30 is perfect for the mill. Going with a 5C is ideal for the lathes. Obviously, you would require to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is likewise a reward. The availability of tooling for each of these designs is excellent. For 5C collet sets, you can get very good quality from Hardinge.
Sherline headstocks and parts been available in a range of models from the factory. Usually ER16 and MT1. Both of which are really little. Sherline also uses WW collet sets for extremely small work. Primarily watchmakers and clockmakers use the WW collets. The majority of 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, most truly don’t care for the MT1 and barely like the ER16. An R8 spindle with a low profile would be best. It uses one of the most flexibility and lots of tool choices. You can discover many 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 variations. Just recently, they have added ballscrew variations for sale. This is far better than the older leadscrew type. Search the internet if you want a review or contrast of ballscrews compared to leadscrews. There are suppliers near Havre De Grace.
Taig also offers lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines primary competitors. In reality, you can find a lot of videos and posts referring to Taig vs Sherline. The Taig products provide far more stiff ways and usually more “sturdy” in general. The Taig motors are pretty weak, just like the Sherline motors. A high quality brushless motor can make the machine appear 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 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 a review of the 5C in the future. The nice 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 produces is the absence of major upgrades.
Sherline offers numerous parts and accessories, but not much to make it a much better machine. To start with, they headstock uses poor quality bearings and the bearings are too little. This suggests the spindle itself needs to be small. A spindle with extremely little mass suggests the lathe or mill the finish quality will not be as excellent and subject to vibration issues. For example, they use many lathe accessories, but you can’t get a 5C headstock or ER25, ER32 or ER40. Plus, the go through hole has to be small since the bearings are little. There is a comparable problem with the mill. You can just use ER16 collets and this limits its usage. Of course those in Havre De Grace, Maryland 21078 may have different needs.
There are other machine choices too. You can also purchase from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, together with other suppliers that offer Chinese mills and lathes. Of course the quality isn’t real excellent. Many wind up either very disappointed or doing a lot of modifications to get the machine to do what they desire. Outstanding upgrades are ballscrews, updated brushless motor, encoder for threading and so on.
If you want to go with a CNC machine, your best bet is the Centroid Acorn. The software and hardware is far much better than Mach3 or a lot of the hardware alternatives 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 standard for several years. However, they were clunky at finest and actually only focused on amature use. Centroid is a well recognized business manufacture of mills. Many of which are 5 axis devices. The 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? Numerous complain that the small chucks will not hold steel for cutting. The part will just fall out. On option 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 larger bearings.