Sherline & Taig Lathe & Mill Upgrades, Reviews for Salt Lake City, UT 84140
Lots of have an interest in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the Salt Lake City, UT. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, attract lots of people. There’s only on place to get the at a reasonable price 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 require to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is likewise a benefit. The availability of tooling for each of these models is outstanding. For 5C collet sets, you can get great quality from Hardinge.
Sherline headstocks and parts been available in a variety of models from the factory. Typically ER16 and MT1. Both of which are really small. Sherline also provides WW collet sets for extremely small work. Mainly watchmakers and clockmakers use the WW collets. Most choose 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, 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 many tool choices. 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 likewise can be found in CNC, manual and CNC ready variations. Recently, they have added ballscrew versions for sale. This is far better than the older leadscrew type. Browse the web if you want a review or comparison of ballscrews compared to leadscrews. There are suppliers near Salt Lake City.
Taig likewise uses lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines main competitors. In reality, you can find a lot of videos and articles describing Taig vs Sherline. The Taig products offer a lot more stiff methods and typically more “strong” overall. The Taig motors are quite weak, much like the Sherline motors. A high quality brushless motor can make the machine seem like a totally various mill or lathe. Taig also provides a great CNC all set mill and lathe. You can likewise opt for their digital CNC system which uses closed-looped steppers and Mach3 software. The Taig spindles have the same issues as the Sherline. They are far too small. The only exception is the 5C collet headstock design they provide. We will do an evaluation of the 5C in the future. The good thing is that they now use a ballscrew alternative for their mill and lathe. Plus, the offer a “gang tool” lathe. The downside with both makes is the lack of serious upgrades.
Sherline offers lots of parts and accessories, however very little to make it a much better machine. To begin with, they headstock uses poor quality bearings and the bearings are too little. This suggests the spindle itself requires to be small. A spindle with very little mass means the lathe or mill the finish quality will not be as great and subject to vibration issues. For instance, they offer many lathe devices, but you can’t get a 5C headstock or ER25, ER32 or ER40. Plus, the travel through hole has to be small since the bearings are small. There is a comparable concern with the mill. You can only utilize ER16 collets and this restricts its use. Of course those in Salt Lake City, Utah 84140 may have different needs.
Video: Taig CNC in Salt Lake City
There are other machine alternatives too. You can also buy from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, in addition to other providers that use Chinese mills and lathes. Of course the quality isn’t genuine excellent. Lots of end up either really dissatisfied or doing a lot of modifications to get the machine to do what they want. Outstanding upgrades are ballscrews, upgraded brushless motor, encoder for threading and so on.
If you want to go with a CNC machine, your best choice is the Centroid Acorn. The software and hardware is far better than Mach3 or a lot 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 requirement for many years. Nevertheless, they were clunky at finest and truly only aimed at amature usage. Centroid is a well established industrial manufacture of mills. Much of which are 5 axis machines. 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 an effective machine. We will likewise produce evaluations of the Taig CNC mill and Sherline CNC mill using the Acorn hardware.
What about a much 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 integrated in. This can open up more options for 5″ or 6″ chuck. Especially if you choose bigger bearings.