Sherline & Taig Lathe & Mill Upgrades, Reviews for Sedan, NM 88436
Lots of have an interest in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the Sedan, NM. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, interest many people. There’s only on location to get the at an affordable price and that’s GlockCNC. Upgrading to a ISO20 or BT30 is ideal for the mill. Choosing a 5C is ideal for the lathes. Obviously, you would need to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is also a reward. The accessibility of tooling for each of these designs is outstanding. For 5C collet sets, you can get excellent quality from Hardinge.
Sherline headstocks and parts come in a variety of designs from the factory. Generally ER16 and MT1. Both of which are very little. Sherline also offers WW collet sets for very tiny work. Mainly watchmakers and clockmakers utilize the WW collets. Most prefer ER25, ER32 or perhaps ER40 collet sizes with a larger spindle pass through hole. The 5C collet for the Sherline lathe would be the best. For Sherline mills, many truly do not 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 versatility and numerous tool choices. You can find lots of evaluations 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, handbook and CNC prepared variations. Recently, they have actually included ballscrew versions for sale. This is far much better than the older leadscrew type. Search the web if you desire an evaluation or contrast of ballscrews compared to leadscrews. There are suppliers near Sedan.
Taig likewise uses lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines main competitors. In truth, you can discover a great deal of videos and short articles referring to Taig vs Sherline. The Taig items use far more rigid ways 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 look like a totally various mill or lathe. Taig likewise offers a nice CNC ready mill and lathe. You can likewise select their digital CNC system which utilizes closed-looped steppers and Mach3 software application. The Taig spindles have the same issues as the Sherline. They are far too little. The only exception is the 5C collet headstock design they offer. We will do a review of the 5C in the future. The nice thing is that they now provide a ballscrew alternative for their mill and lathe. Plus, the offer a “gang tool” lathe. The downside with both makes is the absence of serious upgrades.
Sherline provides many parts and accessories, however not much to make it a much better machine. To start with, they headstock uses poor quality bearings and the bearings are too small. This means the spindle itself needs to be small. A spindle with extremely little mass implies the lathe or mill the finish quality won’t be as great and based on vibration problems. For example, they provide many lathe accessories, but 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 use ER16 collets and this limits its usage. Of course those in Sedan, New Mexico 88436 may have different needs.
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 real great. Numerous end up either very dissatisfied or doing a lot of modifications to get the machine to do what they want. Exceptional upgrades are ballscrews, updated brushless motor, encoder for threading and so on.
If you desire to go with a CNC machine, your best bet is the Centroid Acorn. The software and hardware is far much better than Mach3 or many of the hardware choices in the market. You can do rigid 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. However, they were clunky at best and truly only focused on amature use. Centroid is a well recognized business 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. Combine that with the Centroid Acorn and you will have an effective 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? Many complain that the small chucks won’t hold steel for cutting. The part will simply fall out. On choice is to purchase a headstock with a jaw chuck adapter integrated in. This can open up more options for 5″ or 6″ chuck. Especially if you go with larger bearings.