Sherline & Taig CNC Mill & Lathe Upgrades, Reviews for Ponderosa, NM 87044
Lots of have an interest in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the Ponderosa, NM. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, interest many people. There’s just on location to get the at a reasonable cost and that’s GlockCNC. Upgrading to a ISO20 or BT30 is ideal for the mill. Going with a 5C is perfect for the lathes. Naturally, you would need to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is also a perk. The schedule of tooling for each of these designs is excellent. For 5C collet sets, you can get great quality from Hardinge.
Sherline headstocks and parts can be found in a range of models from the factory. Normally ER16 and MT1. Both of which are extremely little. Sherline also offers WW collet sets for really tiny work. Primarily watchmakers and clockmakers use the WW collets. The majority of choose ER25, ER32 and even ER40 collet sizes with a larger spindle pass through hole. The 5C collet for the Sherline lathe would be the best. For Sherline mills, the majority of really don’t 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 find numerous evaluations 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. Just recently, they have actually included ballscrew variations 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 Ponderosa.
Taig also uses lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines primary competitors. In truth, you can find a lot of videos and articles referring to Taig vs Sherline. The Taig items use much more stiff methods and generally more “sturdy” overall. The Taig motors are quite weak, similar to 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 all set mill and lathe. You can likewise choose their digital CNC system which uses closed-looped steppers and Mach3 software application. The Taig spindles have the 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 nice thing is that they now offer a ballscrew choice for their mill and lathe. Plus, the deal a “gang tool” lathe. The disadvantage with both makes is the absence of severe upgrades.
Sherline provides many parts and attachments, however very little to make it a much better machine. To start with, they headstock usages poor quality bearings and the bearings are too little. This suggests the spindle itself requires to be small. A spindle with very little mass suggests the lathe or mill the finish quality won’t be as excellent and subject to vibration problems. For example, they use many lathe devices, however you can’t get a 5C headstock or ER25, ER32 or ER40. Plus, the travel through hole needs to be little due to the fact that the bearings are small. There is a comparable issue with the mill. You can only use ER16 collets and this restricts its usage. Of course those in Ponderosa, New Mexico 87044 may have different needs.
There are other machine alternatives too. You can also purchase from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, in addition to other providers that provide Chinese mills and lathes. Obviously the quality isn’t real excellent. Many wind up either extremely dissatisfied or doing a great deal of modifications to get the machine to do what they desire. Excellent upgrades are ballscrews, upgraded brushless motor, encoder for threading and so on.
If you want to go with a CNC machine, your best choice is the Centroid Acorn. The software and hardware is far better than Mach3 or many of the hardware choices 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. Nevertheless, they were clunky at best and truly only focused on amature use. Centroid is a well recognized 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 brand names. Integrate that with the Centroid Acorn and you will have a powerful machine. We will also produce reviews of the Taig CNC mill and Sherline CNC mill using the Acorn hardware.
What about a better jaw chuck for the lathe? Lots of complain that the small chucks won’t hold steel for cutting. The part will simply fall out. On alternative is to buy a headstock with a jaw chuck adapter built in. This can open more alternatives for 5″ or 6″ chuck. Particularly if you opt for larger bearings.