Sherline & Taig Lathe & Mill Upgrades, Reviews for Salinas, CA 93907
Many have an interest in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the Salinas, CA. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, attract lots of people. There’s just on location to get the at a sensible cost and that’s GlockCNC. Upgrading to a ISO20 or BT30 is perfect for the mill. Choosing a 5C is ideal for the lathes. Obviously, you would require to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is also a bonus. The availability of tooling for each of these models is exceptional. For 5C collet sets, you can get excellent quality from Hardinge.
Sherline headstocks and parts can be found in a variety of models from the factory. Normally ER16 and MT1. Both of which are very little. Sherline likewise provides WW collet sets for extremely small work. Mainly watchmakers and clockmakers use the WW collets. A lot 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 best. For Sherline mills, most actually don’t care for the MT1 and hardly like the ER16. An R8 spindle with a low profile would be best. It provides one of the most flexibility and many tool choices. You can discover many reviews on both the lathe and the mill. Popular designs are the 2000, 5400, 4000 and 4500 in metric and inch. The also been available in CNC, manual and CNC ready versions. Just recently, they have actually included ballscrew variations for sale. This is far much better than the older leadscrew type. Search the internet if you want a review or comparison of ballscrews compared to leadscrews. There are suppliers near Salinas.
Taig likewise offers lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines main competitors. In truth, you can discover a great deal of videos and posts describing Taig vs Sherline. The Taig items provide a lot more rigid ways and normally more “sturdy” in general. The Taig motors are quite weak, much like the Sherline motors. A high quality brushless motor can make the machine look like an absolutely various mill or lathe. Taig also offers 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 exact 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 nice thing is that they now use a ballscrew choice for their mill and lathe. Plus, the offer a “gang tool” lathe. The disadvantage with both makes is the absence of major upgrades.
Sherline offers numerous parts and attachments, however not much to make it a much better machine. To begin with, they headstock uses bad quality bearings and the bearings are too little. This indicates the spindle itself requires to be small. A spindle with really little mass indicates the lathe or mill the surface quality won’t be as excellent and subject to vibration problems. For example, they offer lots of lathe devices, however 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 comparable issue with the mill. You can only use ER16 collets and this limits its use. Of course those in Salinas, California 93907 may have different needs.
Video: Taig CNC in Salinas
There are other machine alternatives too. You can also buy from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, along with other providers that use Chinese mills and lathes. Naturally the quality isn’t real excellent. Lots of wind up either extremely disappointed or doing a great deal 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 desire to go with a CNC machine, your best option is the Centroid Acorn. The software and hardware is far better than Mach3 or a lot of the hardware options in the market. You can do rigid tapping and threading if you have an encoder. Plus, it uses constant speed for turning applications. Mach3 and Mach4 were the standard for many years. Nevertheless, they were clunky at best and really just focused on amature use. Centroid is a well established commercial manufacture of mills. A lot 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 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? Numerous complain that the small chucks won’t hold steel for cutting. The part will just fall out. On choice is to purchase a headstock with a jaw chuck adapter integrated in. This can open up more choices for 5″ or 6″ chuck. Specifically if you opt for larger bearings.