Sherline & Taig Lathe & Mill Upgrades, Reviews for Houston, TX 77219
Many have an interest in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the Houston, TX. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, interest many people. There’s only on place to get the at a sensible cost and that’s GlockCNC. Updating to a ISO20 or BT30 is ideal for the mill. Choosing a 5C is ideal for the lathes. Naturally, you would need to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is also a bonus. The schedule of tooling for each of these designs is excellent. For 5C collet sets, you can get excellent quality from Hardinge.
Sherline headstocks and parts come in a variety of designs from the factory. Normally ER16 and MT1. Both of which are very little. Sherline also provides WW collet sets for really small work. Mainly watchmakers and clockmakers use the WW collets. A lot of prefer ER25, ER32 or even ER40 collet sizes with a larger spindle go through hole. The 5C collet for the Sherline lathe would be the very best. For Sherline mills, the majority of truly do not care for the MT1 and hardly like the ER16. An R8 spindle with a low profile would be best. It provides the most flexibility and many tool options. You can discover lots of evaluations on both the lathe and the mill. Popular models are the 2000, 5400, 4000 and 4500 in metric and inch. The also been available in CNC, manual and CNC prepared variations. Recently, they have added ballscrew variations for sale. This is far much 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 Houston.
Taig also provides lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines primary competitors. In fact, you can discover a lot of videos and short articles describing Taig vs Sherline. The Taig items provide far more rigid ways and usually more “heavy duty” overall. The Taig motors are quite weak, just like the Sherline motors. A high quality brushless motor can make the machine appear like an absolutely various mill or lathe. Taig also uses 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 design they use. We will do a review 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 drawback with both makes is the lack of serious upgrades.
Sherline offers many parts and attachments, but not much to make it a better machine. To start with, they headstock usages bad quality bearings and the bearings are too small. This suggests the spindle itself needs to be little. A spindle with extremely little mass indicates the lathe or mill the surface quality won’t be as excellent and based on vibration issues. For instance, they offer numerous lathe devices, however you can’t get a 5C headstock or ER25, ER32 or ER40. Plus, the travel through hole has to be small due to the fact that the bearings are little. There is a comparable issue with the mill. You can only use ER16 collets and this limits its usage. Of course those in Houston, Texas 77219 may have different needs.
There are other machine options too. You can likewise purchase from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, together with other suppliers that provide Chinese mills and lathes. Of course the quality isn’t real great. Many wind up either really dissatisfied or doing a great deal 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 want to opt for a CNC machine, your best choice is the Centroid Acorn. The software application and hardware is far much better than Mach3 or a number of the hardware options 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 standard for several years. However, they were cumbersome at best and actually only focused on amature usage. Centroid is a well established industrial manufacture of mills. A lot 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 reviews of the Taig CNC mill and Sherline CNC mill utilizing the Acorn hardware.
What about a much better jaw chuck for the lathe? Many complain that the small chucks will not hold steel for cutting. The part will simply fall out. On alternative is to purchase a headstock with a jaw chuck adapter built in. This can open up more options for 5″ or 6″ chuck. Especially if you choose larger bearings.