Sherline & Taig Lathe & Mill Upgrades, Reviews for Kittery, ME 03904
Numerous have an interest in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the Kittery, ME. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, interest numerous people. There’s only on place to get the at a sensible cost and that’s GlockCNC. Updating to a ISO20 or BT30 is perfect for the mill. Choosing a 5C is perfect for the lathes. Obviously, you would need to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is likewise a bonus. The schedule 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 variety of models from the factory. Generally ER16 and MT1. Both of which are very small. Sherline likewise provides WW collet sets for really small work. Primarily watchmakers and clockmakers utilize the WW collets. The majority of choose ER25, ER32 or even ER40 collet sizes with a larger spindle travel through hole. The 5C collet for the Sherline lathe would be the very best. For Sherline mills, most 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 versatility and lots of 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, handbook and CNC all set versions. Just 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 comparison of ballscrews compared to leadscrews. There are suppliers near Kittery.
Taig also provides lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines main competitors. In fact, you can discover a lot of videos and posts referring to Taig vs Sherline. The Taig products provide far more rigid ways and normally more “heavy duty” in general. The Taig motors are pretty weak, much like the Sherline motors. A high quality brushless motor can make the machine seem like a completely various mill or lathe. Taig likewise offers a nice CNC prepared mill and lathe. You can likewise opt for their digital CNC system which uses 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 design they use. We will do a review of the 5C in the future. The nice thing is that they now provide a ballscrew option for their mill and lathe. Plus, the deal a “gang tool” lathe. The downside with both produces is the lack of major upgrades.
Sherline provides many parts and accessories, however not much to make it a much better machine. To start with, they headstock uses poor quality bearings and the bearings are too small. This implies the spindle itself requires to be little. A spindle with extremely little mass suggests the lathe or mill the surface quality will not be as good and subject to vibration problems. For instance, they offer numerous lathe devices, however you can’t get a 5C headstock or ER25, ER32 or ER40. Plus, the pass through hole needs to be small because the bearings are little. There is a comparable problem with the mill. You can just utilize ER16 collets and this limits its use. Of course those in Kittery, Maine 03904 may have different needs.
There are other machine alternatives too. You can also purchase from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, along with other providers that use Chinese mills and lathes. Naturally the quality isn’t genuine good. Lots of end up either very dissatisfied 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 desire to choose a CNC machine, your best choice is the Centroid Acorn. The software and hardware is far much 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 offers constant speed for turning applications. Mach3 and Mach4 were the standard for many years. Nevertheless, they were cumbersome at best and actually just targeted at amature usage. Centroid is a well established commercial manufacture of mills. A lot of which are 5 axis machines. The best servos to use for CNC on the Sherline or Taig are either DMM, Clearpath or GlockCNC brands. Integrate that with the Centroid Acorn and you will have a powerful machine. We will likewise produce evaluations of the Taig CNC mill and Sherline CNC mill using the Acorn hardware.
What about a much better jaw chuck for the lathe? Lots of complain that the small chucks will not hold steel for cutting. The part will just fall out. On alternative is to buy a headstock with a jaw chuck adapter built in. This can open up more options for 5″ or 6″ chuck. Specifically if you go with larger bearings.