Sherline & Taig Lathe & Mill Upgrades, Reviews for Prentice, WI 54556
Many have an interest in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the Prentice, WI. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, attract numerous people. There’s only on place to get the at a reasonable price which’s GlockCNC. Upgrading to a ISO20 or BT30 is perfect for the mill. Going with a 5C is ideal for the lathes. Of course, you would need to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is also a benefit. The availability of tooling for each of these designs is exceptional. For 5C collet sets, you can get excellent quality from Hardinge.
Sherline headstocks and parts can be found in a variety of designs from the factory. Normally ER16 and MT1. Both of which are very little. Sherline also uses WW collet sets for really small work. Mainly watchmakers and clockmakers utilize the WW collets. The majority of prefer ER25, ER32 and 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, the majority of really do not care for the MT1 and barely like the ER16. An R8 spindle with a low profile would be best. It uses the most flexibility and many 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, manual and CNC prepared versions. Recently, they have actually added ballscrew versions for sale. This is far much better than the older leadscrew type. Search the internet if you want a review or contrast of ballscrews compared to leadscrews. There are suppliers near Prentice.
Taig also uses lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines primary competition. In fact, you can discover a great deal of videos and posts describing Taig vs Sherline. The Taig products use a lot more rigid methods and typically more “heavy duty” overall. The Taig motors are pretty 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 prepared mill and lathe. You can likewise select their digital CNC system which utilizes closed-looped steppers and Mach3 software. The Taig spindles have the same problems as the Sherline. They are far too small. The only exception is the 5C collet headstock model they use. We will do an evaluation of the 5C in the future. The good 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 produces is the lack of severe upgrades.
Sherline provides many parts and accessories, but not much to make it a better machine. To begin with, they headstock usages bad quality bearings and the bearings are too little. This means the spindle itself needs to be small. A spindle with really little mass means the lathe or mill the surface quality will not be as great and based on vibration problems. For instance, they provide numerous lathe devices, however you can’t get a 5C headstock or ER25, ER32 or ER40. Plus, the go through hole has to be small because the bearings are small. There is a comparable problem with the mill. You can just use ER16 collets and this restricts its use. Of course those in Prentice, Wisconsin 54556 may have different needs.
There are other machine options too. You can also buy from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, in addition to other suppliers that provide Chinese mills and lathes. Obviously the quality isn’t genuine great. Lots of wind up either very dissatisfied or doing a lot of modifications to get the machine to do what they desire. Outstanding upgrades are ballscrews, upgraded brushless motor, encoder for threading and so on.
If you want to choose a CNC machine, your best bet is the Centroid Acorn. The software application and hardware is far much better than Mach3 or many of the hardware choices in the market. You can do stiff tapping and threading if you have an encoder. Plus, it provides constant speed for turning applications. Mach3 and Mach4 were the requirement for many years. However, they were clunky at best and truly just targeted at amature usage. Centroid is a well established business manufacture of mills. Many of which are 5 axis machines. The very best servos to utilize 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 also produce evaluations of the Taig CNC mill and Sherline CNC mill utilizing the Acorn hardware.
What about a better jaw chuck for the lathe? Lots of grumble that the little chucks won’t 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 more alternatives for 5″ or 6″ chuck. Specifically if you go with larger bearings.