Sherline & Taig Lathe & Mill Upgrades, Reviews for West Palm Beach, FL 33406
Many are interested in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the West Palm Beach, FL. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, interest numerous individuals. There’s just on location to get the at an affordable price and that’s GlockCNC. Upgrading to a ISO20 or BT30 is perfect for the mill. Choosing a 5C is ideal for the lathes. Naturally, you would need to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is also a benefit. The accessibility of tooling for each of these models is exceptional. For 5C collet sets, you can get great quality from Hardinge.
Sherline headstocks and parts been available in a variety of designs from the factory. Normally ER16 and MT1. Both of which are extremely small. Sherline also offers WW collet sets for extremely small work. Primarily watchmakers and clockmakers use the WW collets. Many prefer ER25, ER32 or even ER40 collet sizes with a bigger spindle travel 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 provides one of the most versatility and many tool choices. You can discover numerous evaluations on both the lathe and the mill. Popular models are the 2000, 5400, 4000 and 4500 in metric and inch. The also can be found in CNC, manual and CNC ready variations. Just recently, they have actually included ballscrew versions for sale. This is far much better than the older leadscrew type. Search the internet if you desire a review or contrast of ballscrews compared to leadscrews. There are suppliers near West Palm Beach.
Taig likewise uses lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines primary competition. In fact, you can find a lot of videos and posts describing Taig vs Sherline. The Taig items offer much more rigid ways and usually more “sturdy” in general. The Taig motors are pretty weak, much like the Sherline motors. A high quality brushless motor can make the machine look like a completely different mill or lathe. Taig also provides a good CNC all set 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 same problems as the Sherline. They are far too small. The only exception is the 5C collet headstock model they provide. 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 drawback with both makes is the lack of serious upgrades.
Sherline offers many parts and attachments, but not much to make it a much better machine. To begin with, they headstock uses poor quality bearings and the bearings are too small. This suggests the spindle itself requires 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 instance, they offer many lathe devices, but you can’t get a 5C headstock or ER25, ER32 or ER40. Plus, the pass through hole has to be small because the bearings are small. There is a similar issue with the mill. You can only use ER16 collets and this limits its usage. Of course those in West Palm Beach, Florida 33406 may have different needs.
There are other machine alternatives too. You can also purchase from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, together with other suppliers that provide Chinese mills and lathes. Obviously the quality isn’t real excellent. Lots of wind up either very dissatisfied or doing a great deal 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 want to opt for a CNC machine, your best option is the Centroid Acorn. The software and hardware is far better than Mach3 or much of the hardware choices in the market. You can do rigid tapping and threading if you have an encoder. Plus, it uses consistent speed for turning applications. Mach3 and Mach4 were the standard for several years. However, they were clunky at finest and actually just targeted at amature usage. Centroid is a well recognized business manufacture of mills. A number of which are 5 axis machines. The 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 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 grumble that the small chucks will not hold steel for cutting. The part will just fall out. On option is to buy a headstock with a jaw chuck adapter integrated in. This can open up more options for 5″ or 6″ chuck. Specifically if you opt for larger bearings.