Sherline & Taig CNC Mill & Lathe Upgrades, Reviews for Winchester, ID 83555
Many have an interest in ISO20, IS030, BT30 and 5C headstocks for both Sherline and Taig mills and lathes in the Winchester, ID. Automatic tool changers, or ATC, interest lots of people. There’s only on location to get the at a sensible price and that’s GlockCNC. Updating to a ISO20 or BT30 is perfect for the mill. Opting for a 5C is perfect for the lathes. Obviously, you would need to upgrade the headstock, bearings and motor. High speed balancing is likewise a bonus offer. The availability of tooling for each of these designs is outstanding. For 5C collet sets, you can get excellent quality from Hardinge.
Sherline headstocks and parts been available in a range of designs from the factory. Normally ER16 and MT1. Both of which are really little. Sherline likewise provides WW collet sets for extremely tiny work. Primarily watchmakers and clockmakers use the WW collets. Most prefer ER25, ER32 or even ER40 collet sizes with a larger spindle travel through hole. The 5C collet for the Sherline lathe would be the very best. For Sherline mills, most really do not care for the MT1 and barely like the ER16. An R8 spindle with a low profile would be best. It provides the most versatility and many tool options. You can find many evaluations on both the lathe and the mill. Popular models are the 2000, 5400, 4000 and 4500 in metric and inch. The likewise can be found in CNC, handbook and CNC prepared versions. Recently, they have actually added ballscrew versions for sale. This is far much better than the older leadscrew type. Search the internet if you desire a review or comparison of ballscrews compared to leadscrews. There are suppliers near Winchester.
Taig likewise uses lathes and mills. It’s Sherlines main competitors. In fact, you can find a lot of videos and short articles describing Taig vs Sherline. The Taig products offer a lot more stiff methods and normally more “heavy duty” in general. The Taig motors are quite weak, similar to the Sherline motors. A high quality brushless motor can make the machine seem like a completely various mill or lathe. Taig also provides a nice CNC prepared mill and lathe. You can likewise opt for their digital CNC system which utilizes closed-looped steppers and Mach3 software application. The Taig spindles have the very same issues as the Sherline. They are far too little. The only exception is the 5C collet headstock design they provide. We will do a review of the 5C in the future. The nice thing is that they now provide a ballscrew choice for their mill and lathe. Plus, the offer a “gang tool” lathe. The drawback with both manufactures is the lack of serious upgrades.
Sherline offers numerous parts and attachments, however not much to make it a better machine. To begin with, they headstock usages poor quality bearings and the bearings are too small. This means the spindle itself needs to be little. A spindle with really little mass means the lathe or mill the finish quality won’t be as good and subject to vibration problems. For example, they provide many lathe accessories, however you can’t get a 5C headstock or ER25, ER32 or ER40. Plus, the travel through hole has to be little due to the fact that the bearings are small. There is a comparable problem with the mill. You can only utilize ER16 collets and this limits its usage. Of course those in Winchester, Idaho 83555 may have different needs.
There are other machine options too. You can also purchase from Grizzly or Harbor Freight, together with other suppliers that offer Chinese mills and lathes. Of course the quality isn’t real good. Many end up either extremely disappointed or doing a lot of modifications to get the machine to do what they want. Outstanding upgrades are ballscrews, updated 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 much of the hardware options in the market. You can do stiff tapping and threading if you have an encoder. Plus, it uses constant speed for turning applications. Mach3 and Mach4 were the standard for several years. However, they were clunky at best and really just targeted at amature usage. Centroid is a well recognized commercial manufacture of mills. Many of which are 5 axis machines. The best servos to use for CNC on the Sherline or Taig are either DMM, Clearpath or GlockCNC brands. Integrate that with the Centroid Acorn and you will have an effective machine. We will likewise produce reviews 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 little chucks won’t hold steel for cutting. The part will just fall out. On option 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 opt for bigger bearings.