Sherline & Taig CNC Mill & Lathe Upgrades, Reviews for Portia, AR 72457
Many have an interest in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the Portia, AR. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, attract many individuals. There’s only on place to get the at a reasonable rate and that’s GlockCNC. Upgrading to a ISO20 or BT30 is perfect for the mill. Going with a 5C is ideal for the lathes. Obviously, you would need to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is also a bonus offer. The schedule of tooling for each of these designs is exceptional. For 5C collet sets, you can get very good quality from Hardinge.
Sherline headstocks and parts come in a range of designs from the factory. Typically ER16 and MT1. Both of which are really little. Sherline also offers WW collet sets for extremely tiny work. Generally watchmakers and clockmakers utilize the WW collets. The majority 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, many actually do not 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 flexibility and numerous tool choices. You can find lots of evaluations on both the lathe and the mill. Popular designs are the 2000, 5400, 4000 and 4500 in metric and inch. The likewise come in CNC, handbook and CNC all set variations. Just recently, they have included ballscrew versions for sale. This is far much better than the older leadscrew type. Search the web if you want an evaluation or comparison of ballscrews compared to leadscrews. There are suppliers near Portia.
Taig also offers lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines main competitors. In fact, you can find a lot of videos and posts referring to Taig vs Sherline. The Taig products provide much more rigid methods and usually more “heavy duty” in general. The Taig motors are pretty weak, just like the Sherline motors. A high quality brushless motor can make the machine look like a completely different mill or lathe. Taig also provides a good CNC all set mill and lathe. You can likewise select their digital CNC system which uses closed-looped steppers and Mach3 software. The Taig spindles have the same problems as the Sherline. They are far too little. The only exception is the 5C collet headstock model they use. We will do an evaluation of the 5C in the future. The great thing is that they now provide a ballscrew option for their mill and lathe. Plus, the offer a “gang tool” lathe. The drawback with both manufactures is the absence of serious upgrades.
Sherline provides numerous parts and attachments, but not much to make it a much better machine. To begin with, they headstock usages bad quality bearings and the bearings are too small. This implies the spindle itself needs to be little. A spindle with really little mass indicates the lathe or mill the surface quality will not be as excellent and based on vibration problems. For instance, they provide lots of lathe devices, but you can’t get a 5C headstock or ER25, ER32 or ER40. Plus, the pass through hole has to be little since the bearings are small. There is a similar issue with the mill. You can just utilize ER16 collets and this limits its usage. Of course those in Portia, Arkansas 72457 may have different needs.
There are other machine options too. You can also purchase from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, in addition to other suppliers that use Chinese mills and lathes. Of course the quality isn’t real great. Many end up either really dissatisfied or doing a lot of modifications to get the machine to do what they want. Excellent upgrades are ballscrews, upgraded brushless motor, encoder for threading and so on.
If you prefer to opt for a CNC machine, your best bet is the Centroid Acorn. The software application and hardware is far better than Mach3 or a number of the hardware choices in the market. You can do stiff tapping and threading if you have an encoder. Plus, it uses consistent speed for turning applications. Mach3 and Mach4 were the standard for several years. However, they were clunky at best and really only targeted at amature usage. Centroid is a well established business manufacture of mills. Many of which are 5 axis devices. The very best servos to utilize 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 an effective machine. We will likewise produce evaluations of the Taig CNC mill and Sherline CNC mill using the Acorn hardware.
What about a better jaw chuck for the lathe? Many complain that the little chucks will not 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 options for 5″ or 6″ chuck. Especially if you opt for bigger bearings.