Sherline & Taig Lathe & Mill Upgrades, Reviews for Whately, MA 01093
Lots of are interested in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the Whately, MA. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, attract many people. There’s just on place to get the at a reasonable price and that’s GlockCNC. Updating to a ISO20 or BT30 is perfect for the mill. Opting for a 5C is ideal for the lathes. Of course, you would need to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is likewise a bonus. The availability of tooling for each of these designs is outstanding. For 5C collet sets, you can get great quality from Hardinge.
Sherline headstocks and parts can be found in a range of models from the factory. Usually ER16 and MT1. Both of which are really small. Sherline likewise provides WW collet sets for extremely tiny work. Generally watchmakers and clockmakers utilize the WW collets. Most choose ER25, ER32 and even ER40 collet sizes with a bigger spindle pass through hole. The 5C collet for the Sherline lathe would be the very best. For Sherline mills, many really don’t care for the MT1 and barely like the ER16. An R8 spindle with a low profile would be best. It uses the most flexibility and lots of tool options. You can find lots of reviews on both the lathe and the mill. Popular models are the 2000, 5400, 4000 and 4500 in metric and inch. The likewise come in CNC, handbook and CNC prepared variations. Just recently, they have actually added ballscrew variations for sale. This is far much better than the older leadscrew type. Search the web if you want a review or comparison of ballscrews compared to leadscrews. There are suppliers near Whately.
Taig also provides lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines primary competitors. In fact, you can find a lot of videos and posts referring to Taig vs Sherline. The Taig products provide much more stiff methods and normally more “strong” overall. The Taig motors are pretty weak, much like the Sherline motors. A high quality brushless motor can make the machine look like an absolutely different mill or lathe. Taig also uses a nice CNC prepared mill and lathe. You can also opt for their digital CNC system which uses closed-looped steppers and Mach3 software application. The Taig spindles have the exact same issues as the Sherline. They are far too small. The only exception is the 5C collet headstock model they provide. We will do a review of the 5C in the future. The nice thing is that they now offer a ballscrew alternative for their mill and lathe. Plus, the offer a “gang tool” lathe. The downside with both makes is the lack of major upgrades.
Sherline offers many parts and accessories, however very little to make it a much better machine. To begin with, they headstock uses bad quality bearings and the bearings are too little. This means the spindle itself requires to be little. A spindle with very little mass indicates the lathe or mill the surface quality won’t be as good and subject to vibration issues. For instance, they offer many lathe accessories, but you can’t get a 5C headstock or ER25, ER32 or ER40. Plus, the go through hole has to be little because the bearings are small. There is a similar concern with the mill. You can only utilize ER16 collets and this limits its use. Of course those in Whately, Massachusetts 01093 may have different needs.
There are other machine choices too. You can also buy from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, together with other suppliers that provide Chinese mills and lathes. Of course the quality isn’t genuine good. Many end up either very dissatisfied or doing a great deal of modifications to get the machine to do what they want. Excellent upgrades are ballscrews, updated brushless motor, encoder for threading and so on.
If you want to choose a CNC machine, your best choice is the Centroid Acorn. The software and hardware is far much better than Mach3 or much of the hardware choices in the market. You can do stiff tapping and threading if you have an encoder. Plus, it provides constant speed for turning applications. Mach3 and Mach4 were the standard for several years. However, they were cumbersome at finest and really just targeted at amature usage. Centroid is a well recognized industrial manufacture of mills. A lot 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 a powerful machine. We will likewise produce reviews of the Taig CNC mill and Sherline CNC mill utilizing the Acorn hardware.
What about a much better jaw chuck for the lathe? Many complain that the little chucks won’t hold steel for cutting. The part will simply fall out. On alternative is to buy a headstock with a jaw chuck adapter built in. This can open more choices for 5″ or 6″ chuck. Especially if you go with larger bearings.