I have several older Sherline lathes and mills that I am considering
either upgrading or selling and then buying a new Sherline machine.

For differences between old and new machines, I am referencing this
link...

http://www.sherline.com/usedmach.htm


How would you decide whether to keep and upgrade OR selling the machine
to buy a new one? What differences are important and which are just
nice to have?

Thanks for any advice.

TMT

According to Too_Many_Tools :
I have several older Sherline lathes and mills that I am considering
either upgrading or selling and then buying a new Sherline machine.

For differences between old and new machines, I am referencing this
link...

http://www.sherline.com/usedmach.htm


How would you decide whether to keep and upgrade OR selling the machine
to buy a new one? What differences are important and which are just
nice to have?

It looks to me (with a quick look through there) that most
things which would matter can be upgraded on older machines.

Proably the ones after the CNC machined parts replaced
extrusions would be a benefit.

Good Luck,
DoN.
--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

Thanks for the response Don.

I would agree that most things can be upgraded.

My concern is whether it was more economical to sell the old machines
and get the newer ones.

I also note that since Sherline got into the CNC market, one can see
that they are tweaking their machines to make them more CNC capable.
Some of these tweaks cannot be done to the older machines. Whether
these mods are critical is another reason whether to keep or sell the
older machines.

I seem to remember that you have a Emco CNC 5....do you find this
machine adequate for your usage? I ask because one of my upgrade paths
would be to sell the Sherline setups and pick up an Emco system later.

Thansk for any advice you might offer.

TMT

According to Too_Many_Tools :
Thanks for the response Don.

I would agree that most things can be upgraded.

My concern is whether it was more economical to sell the old machines
and get the newer ones.

O.K. And for that, I would need the pricing for everything
involved.

I also note that since Sherline got into the CNC market, one can see
that they are tweaking their machines to make them more CNC capable.
Some of these tweaks cannot be done to the older machines. Whether
these mods are critical is another reason whether to keep or sell the
older machines.

Well ... for real CNC, one of the changes which would be a *bad*
idea on a manual machine is true ballscrews for the leadscrews.

I seem to remember that you have a Emco CNC 5....do you find this
machine adequate for your usage?

Not totally -- because I also have a 12x24" Clausing which I use
for larger things, and both a Unimat SL-1000 and a Taig, which I set up
for other specialized tasks, such as crowning screw heads for
concertinas (which could be done with the CNC, but which is quicker with
a form tool in the Taig.

The limitations on the Compact-5/CNC which I find significant
a

1) Maximum resolution in inch mode is 0.001", which translates to
0.002" of diameter when turning. You *can't* program diameters
any smaller, so a diameter ending in an odd digit will cause the
program to error out -- *when* it hits it at run time. If you
remember to step through the program using the '-' key, you will
find out while the carriage is positioned at your start point.
If you just hit "Start", you will find out when the program
reaches that point and the carriage and cross slide are at
somewhere else, so you will have to go through carefully
re-positioning everything -- which may be a real pain if you
originally set the diameter off the unturned workpiece, and now
things are no longer the original diameter. :-)

2) This minimum resolution is a bit of a problem when attempting
to turn a shallow taper (such as a Morse taper), because this
allows you to see the steps in the resulting diameter, which
look ugly on a Morse taper.

The resolution is a bit better in metric mode, where the minimum
step size is 0.01mm (0.0004"), but it is still twice that size
when you get to diameter.

3) Because of the rounding which is done to get either metric or
inch steps, you don't wind up returning to precisely the same
place, even if you end the program with a:


G00 0 0

or whatever you had defined as your starting point. This means
that every few parts (depending on the required accuracy) you
may have to re-establish your zeros. The lathe has no absolute
zero positions to which it can return on power-up. (I'm not at
all sure that the Sherline is any better in this.)

4) The turret toolholder can only be told to move forward "N"
(out of six) stations -- not to go to station "X". So, you, in
your program have to keep track of where the turret is, and
advance it at the end the proper number of steps so it is in the
right position for the next run.

5) You can't benefit from carbide tooling when threading, because
of limitations in the speed of the stepper motors, and of the
ancient 6502 CPU. For most thread pitch ranges at which I use
it, I have to thread at about 200 RPM. Much faster and it
decides that it can't keep up, and refuses to thread until the
speed drops to one at which it is happy.


But with all of these limitations, it still makes it easy to do
some things which would be difficult on my other machines, including
metric threading to a shoulder.

I have modified the gibs (which are a glass-filled nylon, I
think), by adding aluminum backing plates, which *vastly* increases the
time until wear calls for re-adjustment of the gibs.

I would like a somewhat larger machine -- probably on the order
of my Clausing 12x24" machine -- with true servo motors instead of the
steppers which the Compact 5 uses. True servo motors can make rapid
moves a *lot* faster than any of the stepper motors, and can also be set
up to perform very slow moves as well -- so even if you were turning a
Morse taper with a maximum resolution on diameter of 0.002", you could
get a very smooth taper, as the motion of the servo motor would fill in
the steps.

I ask because one of my upgrade paths
would be to sell the Sherline setups and pick up an Emco system later.

Thansk for any advice you might offer.

Well ... I've not used the Sherline system, so I'm not really
sure. But I *think* that the controllers for those microstep the
steppers, so you should be able to get better resolution. However, I'm
not sure that it is as rigid as the Compact-5, which has a true
cast-iron bed, apparently with flame-hardened ways.

I've got a spare parts Compact-5/CNC, which I have been considering
making into a servo-based one. The electronics on it are fried. So,
I could perhaps make one with servo motors, and still use the nice
ballscrews in the Compact-5/CNC, and get higher resolution and faster
rapid motions at the same time.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---