Sherline & Taig Lathe & Mill Upgrades, Reviews for Romulus, NY 14541
Many are interested in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the Romulus, NY. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, interest numerous people. There’s only on place to get the at an affordable cost which’s GlockCNC. Updating to a ISO20 or BT30 is ideal for the mill. Going with a 5C is perfect for the lathes. Obviously, you would need to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is also a bonus. The accessibility of tooling for each of these designs is exceptional. For 5C collet sets, you can get excellent quality from Hardinge.
Sherline headstocks and parts been available in a variety of designs from the factory. Typically ER16 and MT1. Both of which are really small. Sherline also offers WW collet sets for really tiny work. Primarily watchmakers and clockmakers use the WW collets. Most 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 best. For Sherline mills, a lot of actually don’t care for the MT1 and barely like the ER16. An R8 spindle with a low profile would be best. It offers one of the most flexibility and many tool choices. You can find numerous reviews on both the lathe and the mill. Popular models are the 2000, 5400, 4000 and 4500 in metric and inch. The also been available in CNC, manual and CNC prepared variations. Recently, they have actually added ballscrew variations for sale. This is far better than the older leadscrew type. Search the web if you want a review or contrast of ballscrews compared to leadscrews. There are suppliers near Romulus.
Taig also provides lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines main competition. In truth, you can find a lot of videos and posts referring to Taig vs Sherline. The Taig products provide a lot more stiff methods and usually more “heavy duty” overall. The Taig motors are pretty weak, similar to the Sherline motors. A high quality brushless motor can make the machine seem like a totally different mill or lathe. Taig also provides a good CNC ready mill and lathe. You can also go with their digital CNC system which uses closed-looped steppers and Mach3 software application. The Taig spindles have the very same issues as the Sherline. They are far too little. The only exception is the 5C collet headstock design they provide. We will do a review of the 5C in the future. The nice thing is that they now use a ballscrew choice for their mill and lathe. Plus, the offer a “gang tool” lathe. The downside with both produces is the absence of severe upgrades.
Sherline offers numerous parts and accessories, but 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 indicates the spindle itself needs to be small. A spindle with very little mass indicates the lathe or mill the finish quality won’t be as great and based on vibration problems. For example, they use numerous lathe accessories, 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 little. There is a comparable issue with the mill. You can just utilize ER16 collets and this limits its usage. Of course those in Romulus, New York 14541 may have different needs.
Video: Sherline CNC in Romulus
There are other machine options too. You can also buy from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, in addition to other providers that offer Chinese mills and lathes. Naturally the quality isn’t real excellent. Lots of end up either extremely dissatisfied or doing a lot 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 desire to opt for a CNC machine, your best choice is the Centroid Acorn. The software application and hardware is far better than Mach3 or many of the hardware options in the market. You can do stiff tapping and threading if you have an encoder. Plus, it provides continuous speed for turning applications. Mach3 and Mach4 were the requirement for many years. Nevertheless, they were cumbersome at best and truly only targeted at amature usage. Centroid is a well recognized industrial manufacture of mills. Many of which are 5 axis makers. The 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 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? Numerous grumble that the little chucks will not hold steel for cutting. The part will just fall out. On alternative is to purchase a headstock with a jaw chuck adapter integrated in. This can open up more options for 5″ or 6″ chuck. Particularly if you opt for larger bearings.