Sherline & Taig Lathe & Mill Upgrades, Reviews for Portland, ME 04109
Many have an interest in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the Portland, ME. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, appeals to many people. There’s only on place to get the at a reasonable cost and that’s GlockCNC. Upgrading to a ISO20 or BT30 is perfect for the mill. Opting for a 5C is ideal for the lathes. Obviously, you would need to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is also a perk. The accessibility 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 range of models from the factory. Usually ER16 and MT1. Both of which are really small. Sherline likewise provides WW collet sets for extremely small work. Generally watchmakers and clockmakers use the WW collets. The majority of prefer ER25, ER32 or perhaps ER40 collet sizes with a bigger spindle pass through hole. The 5C collet for the Sherline lathe would be the very best. For Sherline mills, a lot of actually do not care for the MT1 and hardly like the ER16. An R8 spindle with a low profile would be best. It offers the most versatility and lots of tool choices. You can find lots of reviews on both the lathe and the mill. Popular models are the 2000, 5400, 4000 and 4500 in metric and inch. The also can be found in CNC, handbook and CNC all set versions. Just recently, they have actually added ballscrew versions for sale. This is far much better than the older leadscrew type. Search the web if you desire a review or comparison of ballscrews compared to leadscrews. There are suppliers near Portland.
Taig also offers lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines main competitors. In reality, you can find a great deal of videos and short articles referring to Taig vs Sherline. The Taig products offer a lot more stiff ways and usually more “heavy duty” in general. The Taig motors are quite weak, much like the Sherline motors. A high quality brushless motor can make the machine seem like a completely different mill or lathe. Taig likewise offers a nice CNC all set mill and lathe. You can likewise opt for their digital CNC system which utilizes closed-looped steppers and Mach3 software application. 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 an evaluation of the 5C in the future. The great thing is that they now offer a ballscrew choice for their mill and lathe. Plus, the offer a “gang tool” lathe. The downside with both makes is the lack of major upgrades.
Sherline provides numerous parts and attachments, however not much to make it a better machine. To start with, they headstock uses bad quality bearings and the bearings are too little. This indicates the spindle itself requires to be little. A spindle with extremely little mass implies the lathe or mill the finish quality won’t be as good and subject to vibration problems. For example, they provide many lathe accessories, however you can’t get a 5C headstock or ER25, ER32 or ER40. Plus, the travel through hole has to be little because the bearings are little. There is a comparable problem with the mill. You can only utilize ER16 collets and this limits its use. Of course those in Portland, Maine 04109 may have different needs.
Video: Sherline CNC in Portland
There are other machine choices too. You can also buy from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, in addition to other suppliers that provide Chinese mills and lathes. Of course the quality isn’t genuine great. Many end 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 prefer to go with a CNC machine, your best option is the Centroid Acorn. The software and hardware is far better than Mach3 or a number of the hardware options in the market. You can do stiff tapping and threading if you have an encoder. Plus, it offers continuous speed for turning applications. Mach3 and Mach4 were the requirement for many years. Nevertheless, they were cumbersome at finest and actually just targeted at amature usage. Centroid is a well established business manufacture of mills. Many of which are 5 axis makers. The very 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 evaluations of the Taig CNC mill and Sherline CNC mill utilizing the Acorn hardware.
What about a much better jaw chuck for the lathe? Lots of complain that the small chucks won’t hold steel for cutting. The part will just fall out. On alternative is to buy a headstock with a jaw chuck adapter integrated in. This can open more alternatives for 5″ or 6″ chuck. Particularly if you choose larger bearings.