Sherline Tools Is Going Out of Business
toolguyd.com
toolguyd.com
Not a surprise to me though since I am operating in the CNC industry I have seen the same struggles and changes, albeit, from a slightly different perspective.
I work with the Smoothieware/Smoothieboard project. It seems, from my observation, that most people are not working with hardware like they were a few years ago. The "homebrew" machines and shadetree makers are becoming few and far between.
The lie has been heavily sold to the maker community that you are "wasting your time if you make something yourself" since it is cheaper to offshore even small 3d prints and machining projects. Not only that but people have been convinced that they don't have the ability to make a machine.
Instead of spending time learning something new/valuable (i.e. Reprap) it is now popular to just have someone else do it...be it AI or a factory in another country with subsidies that create massive differences in bottom line.
The ability to make things at home is disappearing. People cannot/will not learn to make their own machines. Companies that make machines that care about their community and customers are disappearing.
Maybe it's by design? I don't know.
I've seen what people go through when they operate 3D printers. The impression I have is that they still make 2D inkjet printers look like paragons of reliability.
There was way more valuable things learned in the process than just making Benchy.
For years I have been trying to tell people this. The value of Reprap was not just "to have a printer".
[1] https://www.robosprout.com/thank-you-reprap-for-all-of-it/
For people who genuinely wanted the experience of exploring 3D printers, like yourself, I'm very happy that those people got that experience.
For myself, just as I want to print documents and not have adventures with inkjet printers, I want to make things and not have adventures with 3D printers. Which is why I have no plans to own a 3D printer.
It or a similar printer (CoreXY, enclosed if you're going to print filaments which warrant that) from a brand w/ a good reputation should work as well.
They’re a pain in the ass if you buy bottom of the barrel crap with sloppy tolerances for $100 I guess, but the same is true of regular printers.
It’s stuck in the auto calibration stage. It gets halfway through then it stops with a generic error message. The UI around this is really clunky. I’ve tried searching online, asking Claude and nothing. I emailed customer support and they came back with cryptic instructions that assume familiarity with the internals of the machine.
I decided to leave this for a day when I wasn’t too mentally drained from work to debug issues in my free time and instead the machine has been collecting dust ever since.
Maybe it was a mistake to get a Bambi Lab? I thought it was the more turn key option but it hasn’t been my experience.
So it was dead on arrival. You should have contacted support who would have figured out if you need the whole unit replaced or just part of it. If they are not responsive enough just send back the whole thing.
What would you do if you buy a laptop and it never passes the Power-On Self-Test? I would just return it to whoever i bought it from.
> I thought it was the more turn key option but it hasn’t been my experience.
I mean it is. For everyone who i know who owns one. Every company will sell an occasional dud.
Either it got damaged in transit, or the fault somehow escaped their QA, or you managed to screw up the assembly by not plugging in something, or leaving a transit fixture in somehow. Either way contacting support is the correct way to get to the bottom of it.
Come to think of it when i bought my Sherline lathe initially the motor didn’t turn on when i plugged it in. I wrote an email to the distributor who got me in contact with someone from Sherline. They asked me to check a thing which fixed the issue.
I mentioned that in my comment. I contacted CS. Multiple times in fact. They wanted to diagnose the issue remotely before issuing a refund. Their instructions were poorly written and assumed familiarity with the internals of the machine. ChatGPT helped some but not completely. Then life got busy, I had work travel and the 30 return window passed before I realized it.
Your response is, frankly, a little condescending. You seem convinced this is somehow my fault or that sat there twiddling my thumbs. Of course I understand that duds make it through manufacturing at times. It’s great that the happy path is easy. Do we judge the accessibility of a product only by how it behaves when everything goes right? I was careful during assembly and watched multiple YouTube videos and read the official instructions when putting it together, I contacted CS. In retrospect I should have pushed harder for a refund, but my original point still stands. As someone who wanted a “just works” solution, what I got instead was something faulty and then a really painful process for getting it solved.
Like, if the Bambu Labs printer doesn't work either you did nothing wrong and it is broken or you did something incredibly stupid. There is no in-between where e.g. knowing how to build your own Voron gives you an edge in fixing it yourself.
It sounds equally condescending to say that it is difficult to set up a Bambu Labs printer when what you are doing is actually full on fault diagnostics of the internals which you shouldn't have to do. You're allowed to complain about DOA products and terrible QA processes or bad customer support.
Obviously customer support has a perverse incentive to shift the blame onto the customer because RMAs are expensive so you got caught in the crossfire of a defective printer and the customer support.
They were stalling you. You are in someone’s succesfull quarterly KPI metric, as a succesfully avoided return.
> You seem convinced this is somehow my fault
That the printer is not working is 100% Bambu’s fault. That they got away with it is yours.
> As someone who wanted a “just works” solution, what I got instead was something faulty
So there is a misunderstanding here. When people describe a 3d printer as “just works” they mean that it has the sensors and firmware smarts so you don’t need to become an expert to get good quality prints out of it. With previous generations of printers when the print was crap you had to look at the process and tune a ton of parameters to get it okay. Maybe your bed wasn’t flat enough? Or hot enough? Or unevenly heated? Or you needed to tweek an extrusion parameter? Or speed it up or slow it down? Or increase the hot end temp? Or increase the cooling fan rpm?
With a modern 3d printer (like the Bambu ones, but not only them) you don’t have to become an expert. Their engineers nailed down all the parameters which can be nailed down, and the rest which they can’t they added sensors for so the printer can measure them as an in-field calibration.
With the older generation of printers if it is not printing well, oh boy, you should probably get better at tuning it. With the new generation of printers if it is not printing well then the company who made the printer failed you. If it is not printing at all, because it failed the calibration then that’s the printer telling you it is broken.
It is like… imagine that you want a nice picture of your loved ones. Buying an older type of printer was like buying oil paint and a brush. You can’t just hope it will do the picture on its own. You could get the picture you wanted but you had to acquire serious skills first. No art supply shop would accept a return of your paint and brush just because the picture you paint with it are kinda crap.
In contrast buying a new generation of 3d printer is like buying a polaroid camera. It requires way less skill than the oil paint and the brush. You point, you shoot, out comes the picture. If the picture doesn’t come out the polaroid camera is broken and you should return it.
The polaroid camera is “just works” compared to the oil paint and brush even if every second camera is broken comming out of the factory. Because it is not a statement about their defect rate, but a statement about the design philosophy.
There is another set of people who are in 3D printing because they like the experience of debugging and improving the printer as much or more than the final prints they get from it. The most hardcore 3D printing people I know don’t actually print much other than 3D benchies and test towers because their fun comes from playing with the machine and trying new parts. Those people build a different set of printer types than the plug and play units used by most casual makers.
There is a world of difference between a 2019 Creality Ender 3 and a 2023 Bambulab A1 for not that much more money.
Auto-leveling, input shapping, PEI plates, high flow hotends, better build quality... all that have improved reliability significantly while increasing speed by a lot.
It even kind of killed the whole "tips and tricks to have good 3D prints" Youtube niche.
The Ender 3 had a huge role in democratizing 3D printing, but a 20% failure rate was kind of expected. With modern printers, the expectation is bellow 5% failure rate, plus the failures are much less painful since they are ~4 times faster.
It's not quite "press print and it works" but it's pretty damn close.
* 1x Prusa XL Gen 1 with 5 toolheads * 1x Prusa Mk4IS * 1x Bambu Labs X1C with multi-material * 2x Voron 0.2 * 1x Sovol Zero
My experience: the typical higher-end printer runs out of the box and runs hundreds of hours (or more) between maintenance beyond wiping the plate down, occasionally greasing the rails, and blowing little plastic bits out of the enclosure. Every year I end up doing a few hour significant maintenance job on about one of the six printers.
But then there's lemons. That Sovol Zero is terrible and has been down more than it's been up, because of something in the extruder assembly. It also came with a defective camera and needed it replaced. I need to decide whether to rebuild all that with many hours of labor or just get rid of it.
Also, long before mail-order offshore manufacturing, people have been lured away from most of this by the promise of 3D printing. Every other techie I know owns a 3D printer. Most have not made anything interesting with it because they soon learn that the real difficulty is materials science and 3D design. But as a nerd, it's the thing you're supposed to own. In contrast, I know maybe four people in the SF Bay Area who are into woodworking, metalsmithing, CNC, or stuff like that.
I don't see mail-order prototyping as a conspiracy... it's more of a culmination of the DIY community chasing the mirage they were sold on in the early 2010s. I still remember the HN claims: home manufacturing revolution! It's the beginning of a brand new economy, why would anyone buy anything anymore when you can just click "print"... with some amusing parallels to how some folks now talk about building your own software with AI.
The mail-order stuff isn't evil insofar that it may allow some people to make things they couldn't make before. On the flip side, it's a very inefficient way to learn, so I think it will reduce hardware literacy among those who could afford a garage workshop.
FWIW, I think the same goes for AI-assisted hardware design. On one hand, I see people who otherwise wouldn't be DIYing getting into DIY: "I asked Claude and it one-shotted this rectangular enclosure for me, it's amazing!", "Claude made this RP2350 breakout board for me, how cool is that". But I also see established DIYers getting a degree of brain rot.
I miss absolutely nothing about etching my own single layer PCBs at home
Second, I don't think there's a revolution for the general population. Your archetypal middle-aged dad / curious teenager are DIYing less than 20 years ago, which in turn was less than 40 years ago. The stats here are clear, most of "garage" occupations are on the decline. Less space, higher costs, more emphasis on safety. Some hobbies, such as backyard chemistry, are effectively gone. Shop classes in most schools are gone. Making your own bookshelf or building a radio from a kit is no longer a rite of passage.
Third, the "explosion of niche products" - maybe, but I think some of it is just visibility. Kickstarter, HN, Hack-a-Day, and so on. Before that, we had hobby journals for woodworking, electronics, etc, and they were always full of ads for niche gear. You just weren't seeing the totality of it in a doom-scroll loop. Visibility has benefits, but my point is that the qualitative change isn't as profound.
But still, I would love to have a way to build PCBs at home and I'm keeping an eye on people (mostly the Opulo/LumenPnp guy) experimenting milling and more recently engraving with fiber & UV lasers.
What you lose is not monetary, it's the ability to iterate quickly. It can be mitigated with next day manufacturing+delivery from local manufacturers... at a cost (IIRC, ~$80).
But frankly, it would be nicer to pluck a blank board in a laser, press burn, and have a good enough board in 10 minutes.
Fiber lasers are kind of capable of doing that, but they are still a bit expensive (~$2000), the result is imperfect (scorched epoxy board), and you can do at most 2 layers... if you are willing to manually tap rivet vias to connect the layers.
"it is now popular to just have someone else do it...be it AI or a factory in another country"
And sure there are some people interested in reprap but they have been scattered to the wind. #reprap IRC has become an advertising/support channel for commercial printers. If you go to most of the channels/forums where the development used to happen and mention you want to build a printer you will be flooded with responses about how stupid that is and provided with names/links of the printers you should be buying. Making things is a fool's errand.
Maybe my observations were different...maybe not...but from what I saw at about 2016 the whole DIY machine thing switched.
If, however, you want to learn how to build one, or just have an experience of building your own tool you'll use to create stuff, it is most definitely not stupid to do it.
With 3D printing becoming mainstream, you'll have fewer people in those communities who support and live that approach though, and you'll need to look harder to find documentation and like-minded people.
Filled with socks and bots. No room for development.
2011 #reprap @freenode is long gone unfortunately. Glad to have experienced it.
GOOD! Those old DIY machines were awful. Even back then I wanted a printer that just worked, instead of spending hours just to get it printing somewhat accurately. I still have tubs of old ramps/smoothieboards/V6s and similar junk from that era, it was an awful experience. My X1C just works, I've printed more with it since I've bought it than all the other printers I owned combined. Sure there is still the occasional failure, but that is nothing compared to the failure rates I had before.
> The ability to make things at home is disappearing
I do not know what you are talking about.
3D printing at home is more popular than ever. Even families I know who don’t have a computer at home, only their phones, now have 3D printers and use them.
> People cannot/will not learn to make their own machines
I think this is an appeal to 3D printing purity that drove me away from many of the communities. In the early days we all swapped tips and shared reviews of parts (like the Smoothieboard I still have) with other people who liked to build machines because that was the only way to do 3D printing at hobby level prices. When asked what we used the 3D printers for, the joke was that they were used to print parts for our 3D printer. It wasn’t really a joke, though. We spent more time keeping the printers working and trying to tune them than we did printing other things we needed.
That has flipped. Now it’s easy to get a cheap 3D printer and start getting parts out of it without thinking about the printer much. This is great if you’re a person who wants to use the output of the printer. This is boring if you think the value is the process of building and changing the printer hardware all the time.
I’m tired of hearing takes about how this is wrong or bad. Most “makers” want to make other things, not spend their precious free time trying to debug failing prints. There are more opportunities and knowledge available now for people who do want to build their own machines and it’s very cheap. People who want to do that can, but don’t look down upon the people who don’t want to do that.
And what happens if China decides that it is no longer in their interest to allow Americans access to cheap aluminum extrusions, hotends, motors, and controllers?
Between the American tariffs and Chinese prioritization of 3d printing in a past five year plan American hobbyists and small scale producers are in a potential bind.
Then home 3D printing will be the least of our concerns? What kind of question is this?
Ignoring the development of the sorts of skills and abilities in the general public that come from tinkering with small bench top machines like lathes and 3d printers is detrimental to nation’s ability to be self sufficient and raise the next generation of mechanically inclined people.
China seems to get that while other countries don’t.
Frankly, I am confused by much of what in reading here
I replied to your topic about China stopping exports of stepper motors and aluminum extrusions, now you're switching to yet another goalpost.
For what it's worth, I've spent a lot of time with 3D printers in the past decade. The amount I've learned doesn't hold a candle to any of the deep dives I've done for real engineering work. A couple months of paid full-time engineering work on in a new area would bring any engineer up to speed.
3D printers are cool, but the self-importance some people attribute to this hobby is a little too much some times.
Sure, being able to do math and detailed analysis are important. But having a good guess on step 1 is important, too, to narrow the search of huge design spaces.
I think we've all experienced different kinds of engineers. The one you trust to do a month-long trade study with deep mathematical reasoning is usually not the one you trust to just know a plausible path forward. And we need both.
We make our own. You seem to be under the common delusion that because only a tiny % of people work in manufacturing compare to 70 years ago, that mean the US doesn't to manufacturing. In fact the US is manufacturing more than ever with just that tiny % of people. Be glad you don't have to work a boring assembly line job.
At the same time, our production of lower value, commodity-ish things has indeed shrunk rather than grown with population of demand. That manufacturing expertise is more concentrated more on higher value (aerospace, information technology, etc) things and less on fasteners, bulk materials, or extrusions.
We are not vertically integrated in the way that China is.
It takes all kinds and I see no reason to gate keep either way. It's too bad that we do t often segregate around those opinions and don't share as much
Gatekeeping is a good way to describe it. This happens to a lot of niche hobbies that go mainstream. Some of the old ingroup that were into the hobby before it was cool get irrationally angry at the new waves of adoption because they're in it for different reasons.
I don't care why someone is in a hobby. If you want to do it the easy way, good for you. Nothing has been taken away from those who want to do it the hard way. It's much easier to get started building custom machines now than it was when I was starting out.
What are you talking about? Show me one survey that shows DIY crafts as a whole becoming more popular in the past several decades. It's just not a thing. People increasingly don't have room for it, computers and cell phones have won as a way to spend the bulk of our free time, and even if you want to create, the primary outlet is the digital world.
> 3D printing at home is more popular than ever
Sure, but that's a given because the technology didn't exist until very recently. I can also say that Tesla Cybertruck is more popular than ever, but that doesn't mean much, right.
> Even families I know who don’t have a computer at home, only their phones, now have 3D printers and use them.
A vanishingly tiny proportion of families in the US or in the EU own 3D printers and use them.
Moreover, the reduction in or loss of manual trades (woodworking, machining, toolmaking, etc.) whether at home or in industry, amounts to an overall deskilling of the citizenry which has strategic implications.
The the hobbyist in the garage needs to be the topic here, not professionals. The hobbyist enjoying things in the garage still exists, but is still rare. Those that do the work are skilled. If you want to join them there are plenty of books on the subject, it just takes some practice to develop the skills.
Industry is of course deskilled.
Entry level 3D printer sales (the kind you buy from Prusa or Bambu Labs) have been surging for years.
You could Google this and find a thousand articles about it. The entry-level segment has grown massively and continues to expand https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/context-industrial-growt...
> Sure, but that's a given because the technology didn't exist until very recently.
I built my first 3D printer over 10 years ago. The latest printer I bought is much more refined, but it's still stepper motors, belts, a gear driven extruder, and a nozzle like my original printer. The technology has been around for a long time. The popularity explosion is recent.
> A vanishingly tiny proportion of families in the US or in the EU own 3D printers and use them.
We're talking about hobbies and that's how hobbies work, yes.
The hobby is growing significantly, though. Arguing that most households don't have a 3D printer is just a strawman.
Such articles are frequently by the people who would benefit the most from them and usually lack specifics. My favorite version of this is to do a web search for "fastest growing hobby in the world". Lots of hobbies are the fastest growing hobby in the world, it turns out.
Two of my co-workers have one each, and another is planning on buying one for her kids for Christmas --- DJI revenge-investing in Elegoo to spite the folks who left their company to start Bambu Labs pretty much knocked the bottom out of the market and halved (again) the price with the Centauri Carbon, resulting in a glut of ~$300 CoreXY printers, many of which are enclosed and hence have a higher perceived value.
Most estimates are that 2024 had ~4.5 million shipped, and 2025 looked to be even more, and no signs of the upward trajectory decreasing for 2026. For one small snapshot see the recent Snapmaker campaign for the U1, >$20M raised from >20K backers. With most sales to the U.S., for ~135M households, while not at 10%, it is almost certainly past 5%, so approximately 1-in-20 households.
It's like that kid down the block, with the sweet hot rod that rattles the windows, when he drives past, but whenever you drive past his house, the car is up on blocks, and he's working on it.
Working on tools can be a lot of fun, but I like working on stuff that ships, so I prefer tools that don't require much work.
You can tell when it happened, because the E3D v6 nozzle pattern went from being a de facto standard across everything to something you need to buy an adapter for, and nobody really seemed to blink.
The Groovemount was the "standard" for a while there (Makergear, Jhead, etc) then when E3D came in they used the same idea but changed the measurements. It was pointed out to the devs...they left it the way they modified it.
So E3D was incompatible with the mounts that were the "standard"...others later followed and also made their own mounts.
The E3D clones advertised themselves as "jheads" and "E3D" when they were neither...rode on the popularity of other hotends via false advertising. It also happened with the electronics that were popular at the time leading to a lot of issues when people were confused about what firmware would run on the boards they purchased.
It comes down to the fact that these things are tools. Now that reasonably affordable "turnkey" or "off the shelf" options are available, what you're really seeing is the divide between those wanting building the tool itself as their hobby, and those that just want a tool to use on their other hobbies. There was less of a divide previously because for most people, the "just buy one" option simply didn't exist. Now it does.
I spent a lot of time over the years wire-wrapping circuits, then manually laying out and etching/making circuit boards, then using software to do the layouts while still etching/drilling boards myself, then learning and switching the bulk of my projects to surface-mount. It was a necessary part of making electronic bits for stuff I wanted, but I didn't enjoy that part. Now that I can draw something up, send it off and for a few bucks have professionally manufactured multi-layer boards in days/weeks, with many/most components already placed and soldered, why wouldn't I cut out the part I don't enjoy?
I played with 3d printers off and on from about 2006 onwards, though I never kept one around for any real length of time. I found that while I really wanted the capabilities, I didn't want "building and keeping a 3d printer running" to be my hobby. 20 years later, there are options that don't require printer maintenance to be it's own hobby, and I'm much more willing to keep one around.
I've had a couple Chinese-made mini-mills since 2002 -- Sieg X2s, if I remember the old naming scheme correctly, though they were sold by various importers with their own names/model numbers. I converted one to CNC operation in 2004. While I appreciate the work done by others that I could learn from, I did not enjoy the process or the project. If there had been a reasonably affordable "turnkey" option with the capabilities I wanted, I would have 100% taken it. If I needed another one now, with the options available, there's no way I'd bother to build my own. Even then, I would have gone with sherline's early cnc offerings -- they fit my budget, but were just too small for what I wanted to do.
My first CNC router was scratch-built in the early 2000s. My current one came in a crate 4 years ago, and cost about half of what building a new one with the same capabilities from scratch would have. Instead of spending a several months' worth of weekends building it, I spent one weekend unpacking it and setting it up, another fine-tuning it and the software settings, and then was able to start using it for projects I enjoyed.
The ability for people to make things at home is expanding, just not in the way you'd like to see. That isn't a bad thing.
At the end of the day, time is what is ultimately valuable, and I don't have nearly as much of it as I did when I was younger. At this point, I'd much rather spend what time I do have enjoying my hobbies and creating the things I want to create, not building tools or suffering through tasks I hate simply because someone else thinks that is the important part. It seems I'm not the only one.
As for companies that "care" disappearing, well, that's just the current business environment. When the only measure of success that's deemed important is the stock value -- or potential stock value, in the case of startups -- customer service is an expense that can be cut to inflate next months' quarterly report. In exchange, the concept of customer loyalty is dying as well.
When I started hobby CNC a few years ago, the only compact or desktop CNC machines were flimsy Chinese things made entirely of extrusion, expensive machines made for education/prototyping environments and the Carbide3D Nomad (which I ended up buying).
I ended up building a machine from scratch because the original Nomad was too flimsy to really cut metals, even Aluminium.
But in the last few years companies like Makera came along and sell desktop CNC machines that can cut metal for under $6k USD and there's even a toolchanger.
For just a little more, there's a Kickstarter for a 5-axis machine with mist cooling, ATC a wireless probe and it can cut steel and titanium.
And for those that want a DIY project, there seem to be plenty of folks doing CNC conversions of second-hand manual mills.
They use a fork of Smoothieware. [1]
We were happy/surprised to see they shared their mods. It is rare.
Openbuilds was a slotted 2020 china rail kit company, and was very clear about community members being not allowed to post unrelated projects. There was nothing really "open" about their site, but it was more of a Mecano like product.
Sherline CNC mills were never as solid as Taig, but the mini-lathes were workable for small hobby projects (had mine for years till upgrading to a South Bend antique.)
3D printers are easier to use given they handle geometry impossible for milling. If I have a choice between printing or cutting a herringbone gear, than printing wins every time (time cost is zero for automation.)
There is also the export restriction on 5-axis machine CAM software now. Small CNC machines are a great way to learn, but most kids no longer have $7k to spend on a hobby. If you have long term space on property, than a full-sized worn old mill is a better investment (just don't climb mill if you want reasonable tolerances.)
The problem isn't just hobby mills/lathes, but many firms went under in the past few decades. Domestic manufacturers have mostly lost the skills needed to build things themselves. It is funny seeing old 1950's US milling machines (sold as scrap iron) still running small business in the India industrial strip.
Hobby 3D metal-printing + EDM/Grinder technology will probably fill the void, but people are going to see more suboptimal oddball composites.
>Maybe it's by design? I don't know.
Unlikely, just other people making money off of peoples short-term thinking. =3
Even China had a hard time keeping its milling factories fed over the years. The only difference was their government recognized the strategic importance. It is why you can now find drill/tap/chamfer combination carbide end mills in every metric size you could want.
>The ability to make things at home is disappearing
It is changing, for example instead of using noisy cutters people use shears to cut SAC305 solder bars. As in a hobby class 7 zone building space, your neighbors don't want to deal with noise, dust, or weird smells etc.
One will also see more low cost 3D printed mild steel in home 3D printers, as the amount of physical space needed to print an engine block for example is smaller than a fridge. The future is here, but people in the US will have to wait a few more years. You already know why =3
https://www.scraplabs3d.com/product
Not sure about the last startup campaign, but the other two are great teams.
Try to have patience, and best of luck. =3
I built 3 Voron printers because there wasn’t a way to get close to that performance at a price I would choose to pay. I hand-converted a HF mill to DRO then to 2-axis CNC.
I can buy printers that are 90-95% as good for well under $1000 and 75-85% as good for $350 now.
CNC routers are readily available and good. Laser cutters are readily available, reasonably cheap, and good.
I just don’t see a broad migration to importing maker parts (other than PCBB/PCBA, which is phenomenal).
Nah, we just went with Bambu. No shade to the reprap community but my enjoyment of the hobby is with the printing of models, not tinkering with my machine constantly.
The amount of failed builds I got with the prusa xl due to its tool changer meant it was the last prusa my household will ever get
its just different times
But nearly all of them want to make stuff... not make the tool that makes stuff. It's the whole "my hobby is 3d printing" vs "my hobby is 3d printers".
Assembling a Voron is already a one or two week-ends project, building and configuring a custom CNC router can take months and there are class of tools which are simply inaccessible (making multi-layer PCBs, building anything rigid enough for steel machining).
Homebrew machines will always have its aficionados, people still are building Vorons for example, even when it doesn't really make sense financially or in terms of performance. But it's a niche that only grew early-one artificially when it's the only path (ex: reprap & early 3dp days), most people don't actually enjoy this part.
IMHO, having cheap ($500 or less) numerically controlled pre-made tools like 3d printers, laser cutters/engravers and lately maybe desktop CNCs, has been a blessing in the maker space, lowering the barrier to entry and enabling an explosion in the number of people building stuff.
The other end of the spectrum is tools like the Langmuir bed mill/router or the avid benchtop routers with available 4 pole spindles.
There’s a lot of options, closed loop steppers are sub $100, servos from DMM or teknic are readily available and awesome.
Sherline has a product set that just felt like a compromise on everything.
In the last decade, I’ve built 3 routers, rebuilt a bed mill, converted a Bridgeport, and am currently building an automated beam saw. All the options in the market are drastically better than they were 15 years ago.
It’s sad to see a fixture of the community going out of business, but it also a reflection that the business is different now. Given the many different kits and options available, it just doesn’t make sense to buy small work envelope machines for most people.
I haven’t shopped the Sherline catalog in a long time but this appears to be a case of a company failing to keep up with changing market conditions. Depending on how old the owners were, that may have been not too unreasonable. Some of these companies get founded by people who put a lot of work into establishing the small business, make their wealth, and then make the choice to let the business continue operating as a lifestyle business with low inputs until the income drops too low to pay the expenses. Not every company is designed to be a multi generational juggernaut.
Bureaucracy - the levels of it are insane especially in EU, but US is not far behind. The loss of local partners and environment - every little thing you can do locally makes production easier and cheaper. Failure to attract young people – although production is cool, it's not Youtube influencer level cool and industry relies increasingly on older generations. Education - the quality of it is sinking almost all over the world. Insecurity - partly just part of times, but mostly coming from regulation, taxes etc.
Usually it means the pay is crap, the schedule is bad and nobody is willing to invest into training. Why should young people select such career?
It also has much better and more predictable hours than, say, the ever-popular gaming industry.
You're right that low pay is an issue, but pay is crap in part because of outsourcing. Any machine shop in the US is competing with China to an extent that, oddly, we don't actually see in the software space. The West is mostly using Western-made software, and outside of that, only India is invited to the club (and even that only as a subcontractor).
But a lot of it is also just culture / parenting. Every parent wants their kid to become a software engineer, a lawyer, or a doctor. There's basically zero pride in being a machinist.
Plumbing does not pay well for the average plumber. Not doctor-well at least, which is what you are responding to.
Can some plumbers make good money? Absolutely. But you need to do dirty, body-breaking work for years.
There’s nothing wrong with being a plumber and it’s a profession we surely need young people to go into. But the pay and trade offs vs a white color job will lean heavily in direction of the latter.
We also have such tradition. Senior software engineers are teaching juniors.
Would tradition manufacturing employ an apprentice without knowledge about the tools and materials? I doubt that. Everyone now wants to get a senior employee with 20y of experience and pay junior rates.
> Every parent wants their kid to become a software engineer, a lawyer, or a doctor.
> There's basically zero pride in being a machinist.
If you don't attend university, being a machinist is skilled labour that pays well. Plus, you can continuously self-educate to climb into more and more skilled roles that pay more. The salary is solidly middle class, and the work is probably in areas with a low cost of living.
I disagree.
A lot of people, nerds (and me) included, would see no problem in taking an operational role inside manufacturing if it paid a livable wage and offered a career.
But somehow people still act shocked when nobody wants to work a job that pays retail wages.
3D printers, laser cutters and benchtop CNC routers have the taken over the lion share of what hobbyists (and some professionals) used to do with these machines. Mine are just collecting dust while my 3D printers crank out parts every day.
One reason why I bought sherline is the company was still in business and creating so many accessories.
I guess I'll be trying to buy stuff off of eBay or something like I would have been doing had I bought Chinese stuff.
Speaking of which does anyone know the details of their small 60 degree carbide inserts? I assume that don't make those themselves.
Ever since I started living on my own I've lived in apartments, none of which had a backyard (one of them had a parking lot). None of my friends owns a house either. I'm the perfect customer for this and I'd love to do my own projects (two of which require a lathe!) but I simply don't have the space.
Is this just me? Or is the disappearance of the hobby garage a real phenomenon? A 3D printer is fairly limited in what it allows, but it also doesn't throw sawdust in the center of my living room.
There are many operating models. Some are attached to another organization (a library, a university), some are commercial (RIP Techshop), some are completely DIY and member-run. Any given city might have a handful of different ones, but you'll have to dig around and visit a few to see what you vibe with.
Caveat, it's very easy to get focused on the ooh-shiny tools, and forget to pay attention to the community energy and expectations. Some of the more professional spaces, you just pay for what you want, and staff takes care of the rest. At the other end of the scale, the fully-DIY places are very much a case of "you get out of it what you put into it", and may offer cheaper memberships but expect a lot more involvement.
Visit as many as you can.
My problem is that I just...don't care about the community that much, and ended up just buying the tools I needed/outsourcing as needed. Though travel time/cost made it really uncompetitive (I don't drive, and neither of the large makerspaces in my city bothered to take transit accessibility into account...sigh). Even if I did drive, to me the commute time is just time better spent actually working on project du jour. All of that, plus the rise of sites like JLC(PCB|3DP) and sendcutsend where I can just get the part I want without any hassle really killed the value proposition for me.
I still like the idea of makerspaces, but it feels to me that the community has become the product. Which is all well and good, but if you don't particularly value that part, cheap tools + online fabrication services are already a tough comparison, and that's before burning a couple of hours on transit, before I've even touched a tool, well, the practical case completely falls apart for me.
Not in the US. The suburbs are still growing, and all of them feature large garages. It might not fit your lifestyle though, and so you don't see it.
There are plenty of people who make very complex models in tiny apartments. With some skill you can do a lot in a small space. A few people do that.
Sherline was one of the rare sane size manual machines that weren't just rebranded Sieg. Actually even the insane ones have largely disappeared. Only options are antiques and Taig. And in many places in the world, all three of those options are completely unobtainable. Only the Sieg machines remain.
Personally, I don't care because I managed to find an antique machine or two that should last a lifetime and Sherline isn't really something I could buy here, but I know there's people who are dreaming of having a lathe and possibly a mill that doesn't take a separate building with reinforced floor to own and no options left. (Ok, Proxxon also exists.)
Well done sir.
There seems to be a lot of misinformation (folks claiming Gingery was melting down working machines to make his, when they were iron or steel and he was casting aluminum)....
Can’t help but wonder if “operating costs” include tariffs and other policy decisions by the current administration that have driven up costs for everyone.
It is not just tariffs. The cost of living in the US, especially housing, has approximately doubled in my area since 2019. There is a massive overinvestment in real estate. When housing costs go up it forces companies to pay their employees more to adjust which then drives up the COGS. This becomes a feedback loop because the real estate investors see the prices go up and say "well we have to raise rents because COGS are going up."
Competing with any offshore becomes impossible (especially when compared to countries which subsidize their production). Companies close instead of attempting to compete. Why would you when simply investing in real estate, crypto or AI would net more money? The parts needed to produce in the US are typically not made in the US.
Tariffs hurt...a lot...the companies I work with directly (including mine) have been struggling with them for a decade now. But it is a lot more than that...there is a general lack of interest in making things that are real. Plus, the cost if you attempt to do so puts you in a position where you cannot be competitive.
The cost of living, also, needs a reframe. The real truth there is that most people, who live paycheck to paycheck, are half as prosperous as they were a couple of years ago. Think about that. The Majority of an entire country became twice as poor practically overnight. It’s not cost of living rising , it’s standard of living being halved for most Americans. It’s not a small thing, and it will have reprocussions for decades. A population on strong retrograde prosperity does not innovate, does not invent, does not plan for the future. It’s basically terminal cancer.
No doubt innovation will rise once the ashes cool, but that’s more like what we are seeing in Eastern Europe, admirable and significant, but no equivalence whatsoever to the economic juggernaut that the USA once was. (And still is, for now)
Maybe automation will turn that around, but who then is the beneficiary of a fleet of millions (billions?) of corporate owned general purpose humanoid robots? That’s a big part of what my startup is working on ; making that phase generally useful to regular people, not just corporate giants.
In my town there is a constant raising of rent. People moving away, tons of new overpriced apartments largely vacant. Huge number of short term rentals. Affordable houses are torn down to make condos which are owned by people who don't live there (vacant most of the year, held as investment).
So many vacant commercial units with prices that don't match what businesses can afford to pay...but it drives up the rest of the rental prices to people going "site unseen". If you were not from here you would assume there is a huge demand for those buildings at that rate...this is not true.
These investors are not planning on using these units to help the housing crisis...and they have the ability to "stay irrational longer than renters can stay solvent". Overall this will come back to bite them...but in the short term they can reap the rewards.
Some commercial loans allow "interest only payments" if the unit is vacant. This allows investors to buy several locations...keep half vacant at higher prices and drive up the rents in the area. Through collusion and catering to out of area investors (who don't know better) they can hold the properties for a few years and double their money without every renting the building or paying on the principal of their loan.
This is what I mean by "overinvestment". Locally...why would you invest in a company (US or not) when you can just call dibs on essential services and rake in cash.
My county last I checked was over 35% retired. Most of those who I speak with moved here from out of state and bought multiple houses with the goal of renting them out to pay for their retirement...but when COGS go up that means rent needs to also to support the lifestyle they are accustomed to. Renters are expected to "quit buying coffees" so they can pay the rent...but nobody seems to ask the real estate investor to take personal responsibility for their part in the problem.
I know people say more investment in real estate drives prices down...but that is not the case. Nobody here is building housing to make it cheaper...they are building it because they heard they can get more money than last year. "If they build a new building it should be worth more than an old one right?" So prices keep climbing. Average renter here makes $30-40k (last I checked) but to live in a way that allows you to save you need to make $70k/year.
There is no housing shortage (in my area). There is an "affordable housing" shortage...and that will not be solved by building more unless there are major changes made to the way commercial loans (or personal ethics) are handled.
The only hope is people learn to practice ethical capitalism.
A) pensions don’t exist so people need cashflow to retire. You either save enough capital that you can build an annuity for yourself or you have cash flow investments and the lowest effort one is rental properties.
B) taxes for capital gains on a home that’s appreciated enough incentive rolling your home into a rental then rolling it into more rentals as it appreciates further afield into lower cost areas. The basis isn’t taxable as long as you roll it to another investment, and as prices go up, you are incentivized to move it into more properties to diversify at lower rents but more units. As that effect continues as people retire the cost of rentals further from the city core keeps rising. An easy fix would be to raise the capital gains deduction for a primary residence to incentive retirees to outright sell and take the annuity option, which is actually easier overall but the capital gains tax makes it unattractive today.
C) Obviously the financing your described, but compounded by private equity and hedge fund dominance in the unit and development rental market skewing towards higher margin lower occupancy developments. The marginal cost of a mass produced “luxury” rental allows for a lot of vacancy, compounded by the IO and other benefits to reduce vacancy load costs. There are also tax benefits to vacancy that improve as your portfolio gets larger. I think this is more than the retiree effect honestly, I think funds dominate large developments now and increasingly unit level portfolios.
D) The rezoning effect is IMO making it worse because it’s making the optionality of low density developments greater allowing for land value appreciation that wouldn’t happen otherwise because of (C). It’s taking a property with lower utility and making it more valuable for a larger development, but there’s no incentive to make the development more affordable per unit. Instead it increases the price per square foot of property value, increasing costs for everyone, while marginally increasing units but they’re constructed and priced to keep price per square foot of livable areas equal or increasing.
I think (A) can’t improve without a real social security system that replaces pensions. (B) can’t improve without tax reform realizing the nominal cutoffs don’t account for inflation and aren’t “rich” taxes any more but retiree taxes. (C) is probably intractable without socialist regulations which are perceived as unfair, and are hard to craft in a way that is not in fact unfair or have unintended consequences (D) is hard because it’s actually a demonstration of the unintended consequences of regulation and ethical capitalism - but the effect is paradoxical.
These are all structurally hard problems and they aren’t made better by the rate of global population growth. There are way more people today than there were before, and economic activity is much denser than before. The urban areas are crushed, and the rural areas empty except for a hoary crust of MAGA with disproportionate state and federal power. It is frustrating all over - and I don’t see an end state that is very positive.
Where I live used to be the rural area that people made fun of you for being from (Idaho). Also, my county is 70%+ MAGA voters. So I understand your point about disproportionate amount of power...that is another topic entirely (as is the Redoubt movement and other things attempting to profit off the imbalance).
This is happening everywhere around me. Montana is just as bad. Locals have nowhere to go and cannot afford to stay.
I don't have a solution...just pointing out my observations of the issues I have encountered personally.
This central planner grand vision bullshit we embarked on over the second half of the 20th century was a mistake.
> A) pensions don’t exist so people need cashflow to retire. You either save enough capital that you can build an annuity for yourself or you have cash flow investments and the lowest effort one is rental properties.
"pensions don’t exist": This is certainly untrue, especially for retired people today. Private pensions only started to disappear enmass in the late 1990s. Public pension certainly exists. It is called Social Security, and it pays about 25K USD (on average) per year, per retired person.
"so people need cashflow to retire": Sure, they can do that with a 401k that holds bonds. For those unaware, 401k plans really took off in the 1980s. Retired people today most likely have one, plus their 401k was growing during an incredible time. From 1985 to 2015, the S&P 500 grew 12+% per year. That is crazy compounded results!
"you have cash flow investments and the lowest effort one is rental properties": I don't know where this myth started of "rental properties are low effort", but it needs to die. It is much more work that managing a 401k. Also, the ROI for rental properties is rarely more than 5%. Frequently, lower. So, the 401k looks much better and more consistent. Sometimes rental properties are vacant for months at a time. Then you have negative yield/carry because you still have expenses.
Most people having had a rental at some point understand the concepts a lot better than bond trading and investing writ large. They also can’t convert their basis in their home appreciation into their 401k, and my point was on basis rolling of property capital gains and how to convert your family home appreciation into a tax deferred vehicle with cashflow.
Personally, I agree with you; I would do a self managed annuity structure and hire an advisor for my later life when I may not be able to manage it. However, I’m just explaining the typical thinking. And the capital appreciation basis roll is a real problem for retirees whose home appreciated over their lives.
I think you misunderstand what happened in the 80’s - pensions were raided and they were stolen. In the 90’s the defense was to not offer them any more. There do exist some pensions, mostly governmental, and some rare corporate pensions that escaped raiding, but the survival of private pensions wasn’t great even for those that had them. Social security is below poverty rates, and is not a retirement plan but supplemental. It was designed with the private pension system existing in mind. I’m fine with expanding social security by lifting income caps and other fixes, including a sovereign wealth fund. The status quo isn’t tenable.
> Bond yields aren’t comparable to property cash flow; especially leveraged property.
> I think you misunderstand what happened in the 80’s - pensions were raided and they were stolen.
The 401k with company matching has largely replaced (or: overtaken) the private pension in the United States. The primary problem with putting so much pressure on the 401k system: There are lots of people who don't have/use professional advice how to manage their savings. My mother was well-educated (master's degree) and was a public school teacher for 35+ years. She was not well-equipped to manage her 401k. She only understood the basics. Think about that: She has two university degrees. Think of all the people who have much less and are required to manage their primary source of retirement income. It is a flawed system.
Personally, I much prefer the Dutch or Japanese "Three Pillar" system: (1) National minimum pension (like US Social Security), (2) private pension provided by workplace (professionally managed), (3) personal pension(s) (similar to 401k). In combination, the trio provides the greatest chance for people to avoid poverty during retirement.
That still leaves a lot of people with a terrible retirement plan though. SS is something, but that is about all you can say about it.
I’d also note you have to be at a company that even offers a 401k. Only 45% of Americans have access to a 401k, or have their own IRA. This isn’t a safety net - I’d like to see you do a high wire with only 45% of the area of your walk covered with a net, and of that the median segment doesn’t have the strength to hold your weight. It’s a political gambit to fool people into voting against their best interests.
It was bought out by employees in 2017 and it seems like they weren't able to manage it successfully. The two that acquired it were well over 70 when they did so, so I guess this isn't very surprising. From the article it sounds like they spent a lot of money trying to 'modernize' the business, which sounds a lot like they brought in management that was more interested in 'doing management. than making money.
Boy it'd be tragic if these guys felt like they were over their heads, decided to "hire some experts" and ended up with MBAs.
Sherline, for example, specifies spindle nose runout of 0.0005 inch or less and spindle end play around 0.0002 inch or less, using two 20-mm ball bearings with adjustable preload. That’s only about 13 µm runout. A Chinese factory can absolutely manufacture that.
Manufacturers such as SIEG took conventional lathe architecture and mass-produced it.
There is nothing original going on there lots of copying
China merely followed the American approach towards industrial success.
"Steal to get ahead, but suppress others who steal after you are ahead"
India had to fight extremely hard in USPTO to stop Indian turmeric from being patented. Perhaps you folks should go into Chinese offices and fight for years to be equitable.
It's a pure manufacturing cost play to make something precise enough, rigid enough, and light enough[0] while being inexpensive enough for the market segment it's aimed at.
Is it a bummer that a US manufacturer went out of business trying to make money at that play? Yes. Is there anything nefarious going on with IP theft? Absolutely not.
[0] This is being sold to customers who don't hire riggers to move their machines.
And it's the one thing that unites every mainstream politician against Trump - they can't agree on tons of stuff, other than that we definitely should not be using tariffs to defend local manufacturers against Chinese (or any other) imports. I've been assured that those jobs are "not coming back." Well, big surprise - they're also not going to stop disappearing.
It's certainly destructive to local companies, but that's what tariffs are for. If you think we should be making lathes, then throw tariffs on countries that make them cheaper. If that just moves the pressure to a consumer who still can't afford local lathes, stop handing free money to stockholders and real estate owners and start handing it to people who buy things.
There was a lot of knowledge transferred and training as part of that. For what its worth we previously had trained our North American partners. China could definitely not make our equipment themselves at that point in time. We did retain some key technologies but most of it was moved over.
I don't see how anyone can deny that the Chinese got a lot of the know-how as part of the mass transfer of production to China. 90% of their manufacturing know-how is from the west.
If the point is that Sherline specifically today doesn't have any IP they might care about- sure. It's been copied/reverse engineered/"stolen" a long time ago. I don't know when the Chinese entered the hobbyist machining market but when they did I'm sure copying existing designs wasn't exactly a barrier, or stealing trade secrets, or ignoring patents.
However, this does not change the reality that Sherline made extremely basic machine tools. China makes superior and more complex machine tools than Sherline ever did: by far. This knowledge was not 'stolen' in any conspiratorial sense: they have produced metal lathes since the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE) and modern engine lathes since the 1930s with significant national production since 1949 and CNC lathes since 1973. I should think Russia and China would have collaborated on early modern machine tool production, and this could not be characterized as 'theft'.
Today, most cutting tools, accessories, and machine tools are made in China. The notion China needs to steal knowledge from the west for general equipment is frankly laughable. For specialist equipment, yes there's a lot that Japan, Europe and the US lead in. However, I don't think that's in any way related to Sherline's former or current position as a budget/hobbyist focused entry-level brand.
You'll be surprised how many little tricks and small innovations are in "extremely basic tools".
http://vintagemachinery.org/mfgindex/detail.aspx?id=10714
"In 1970 Adelaide, Australia engineer Harold Clisby patented a novel lathe design that made use of aluminum and other metal extrusions. Clever techniques provided surprisingly good accuracy for such a low-cost production method. He made a modest number of machines and accessories himself.
In 1972 Melbourne engineer Ron Sher began production of what he called the "Sherline" lathe in Australia, as Ronald Sher Pty. Ltd. In 1973 Joe Martin of Martin Enterprises in San Marcos, CA, began importing the Sherline lathe to the USA. In 1974 Martin began manufacturing the Sherline lathe in California USA. In about 1979 the lathe business was separated off as Sherline Products, Inc."
The 1970's patents are long expired but the point is to show there's actually innovation in there despite the obvious simplicity.
I'm sure China could independently come up with better designs. But they do often just copy. Because it's easier. So "needs to steal knowledge" for simple designs/products? No. Steals? I mean you can buy Chinese literal copies of anything.
The Chinese are obviously very capable and pretty much everything and anything other than some very specialized bits are made in China. They got there partly via copying and pretty lax to non-existent IP protection. The Japanese did that before them. There are other aspects of how they compete which are possibly questionable (like poorer working conditions, environmental laws, etc.) Can't say anything specific about Sherline here but it's very hard for a western company to compete with China. Here is what Gemini says on this topic:
"Yes, Chinese manufacturers do produce machines that are widely recognized as direct clones of Sherline's precision lathes, mills, and small CNC setups. The most prominent example is Xendoll (Xendoll Tools), which manufactures a line of desktop and micro machine tools. Their manual lathes, mills, and CNC kits visually and functionally mimic Sherline’s classic designs. Target Market: These Chinese copies are marketed heavily toward education, STEM programs, hobbyists, and DIY makers. Design & Features: They replicate the compact footprint and modular configurations that made Sherline a staple for micro-machining small metal and plastic parts. The influx of these lower-cost overseas clones and cheap desktop CNC imports has heavily impacted the American micro-machining market. Under severe financial pressure from these imports, rising domestic manufacturing costs, and shifting hobbyist trends like the widespread adoption of 3D printing, Sherline announced in mid-September 2026 that it is winding down all US manufacturing. After 52 years in business, the company is expected to close its doors entirely by the end of 2026. While the Chinese copies provide a cheaper entry point for beginners, the machining community frequently points out the intellectual property implications of directly copying a storied American brand's legacy designs."
Knowledge has been assimilated and significant R&D efforts is being put in. If I look at Bambulalab, xTool or Makera, I see genuine designs, significant improvements in quality and price drops way beyond what cheaper labor can explain.
And it's also visible in other spaces: think DJI drones or CATL batteries in cars.
We use to see Japan in the same light by the way:
I earned an MSME without ever learning to actually make things, so once I could afford it I bought a Sherline CNC mill and taught myself to use it. I made many mistakes but got there. I used it just last week to make a wind gauge mounting bracket for a 70 year old sailboat.
I liked that it was made in the USA and (at the time, pre mainstream internet) had a great community to learn from.
I know there are other options still, but Sherline has a fond place in my heart for how easy they made it to get started.
Oh wait you meant something else,
Myself I am biased towards antique manual machines, if you are not in a hurry you can push them beyond what we might expect.
(ob. discl., I work for a hobbyist CNC company, but we don't offer a 4th axis or lathe)
For an extreme example of partisanship on this, see the Youtube channel "Inheritance Machining"
Plus their machinery is a bit more realistic for a hobbyist.
If you are a builder, there is no sane way to bid on contracts with such hugely variable COGS.
And how the HELL do you even attempt to fix the US housing supply if you are tariffing Canadian lumber? You can't.
Lumber framing only makes sense if you want something dirt cheap (and yet, US matchsticks and cardboard houses go for millions of dollars?!) or something that needs to be earthquake resilient and affordable.
It's because of our earthquakes and the severity of our storms. The lumber frame and design of construction flexes and sways when stone and brick would break (tornados are different story). Likewise when they do break, and they absolutely will given some of these forces, it doesn't bankrupt people and companies when trying to recover from those events. Bigger buildings of concrete, stone and brick here are now built very different, sometimes on giant metal plates with actual springs.
Here you go:
https://youtube.com/shorts/jFph1d2WR3s
Btw:
> or something that needs to be earthquake resilient and affordable
I actually worked in construction and now studying electrical engineering, focus residential.
> weird grudge against wood framing
Well, it's cheap to build but sold to your population at prices that have us ROFLing, it needs to be treated with all kinds of nastyness to survive stuff like termites, a lot of construction is incredibly shoddy (watch some Cy Porter), it's not durable like our houses that last many decades to centuries... choose your pick.
And none of your homes would last more than 50y here before an earthquake, tornado, or hurricane destroyed them.
- Raw lumber costs are about 1% of the price of a house in California.
- Lumber prices were much much higher during the pandemic and are actually not that high right now: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lumber (it's at 9 months low and cheaper than in 2018).
There is a 24-45% tariff on building supplies, steel, aluminum, and cement.
> Raw lumber costs are about 1% of the price of a house in California.
California is fucking weird then, because it's 16% or more other places.
https://www.txrac.com/blog/cost-to-build-a-house-from-scratc...
Is there a free alternative to this ideally community owned and open source?
I spent overly long trying to learn on sherline tools and once I gave up and bought a Bridgeport and an old Logan, I realized that I was just banging my head against the limitations of the tools.
the value they had was that they were cheaper than the smaller version of the standard toolroom machines, and they were a way to bootstrap yourself without having the heavy power and the floorspace. so pretty much the storefront, not the IP. I still have their 4" rotary, and its actually not bad. the mill had a huge amount of flex in the column that made it pretty unusable for me unless you took really really tiny passes.
I had an old Unimat for a couple years, and while that was even _more_ dodgy than the sherline the fact that it was all steel and a combined mill/lathe made it a lot more interesting. would rather see some community standards for tooling on a platform like that. maybe a 50% larger so setup isn't so fiddly.
I think there is plenty of room for innovation in hobby machines, but IME, hobbiest value work envelope maybe even more than pros.
one wonders what the other alternatives are.
I mentioned Taig elsethread, and the Unimat is still available at https://thecooltool.com/en/ --- for opensource there are a couple of options:
- https://www.lathes.co.uk/multimachine/
- https://www.printables.com/model/89657-3d-printed-wood-lathe...
and I've been debating on getting a small Grizzly G0745: https://www.grizzly.com/products/grizzly-4-x-6-variable-spee...
Are there other notable approaches/options?
If you were committed to wanting a small lathe and CNC, I’d just put linear rails on some of the larger 8020 profiles and rig a spindle from a cartridge spindle. Honestly, though, an 8x16 lathe is kinda bare minimum for steel parts unless you are working VERY slowly. The 7x14 I had worked, but at that scale, I’d be working hard to implement a clough42 ELS conversion so that threading didn’t suck so bad.
If this is genuinely something you want advice/help with, feel free to email me.
It's more idle speculation at this point in time --- I did save the electric motor from replacing the garbage disposal recently (cracked housing) and I also have a key duplicator I fished out of a dumpster (working!) and really, it should be workable to fabricate something given the tools I have.
If you did a writeup on making a lathe w/ 8020 profiles and a cartridge spindle (source?) I'd be interested --- what would the total landed cost be?
They make mills and lathes. They are really nice little machines, great for hobby use. We have one lathe from them in our hackspace for example, and it is a delight. Of course you have to understand the limitations of the tool, but that is true for every machine.
That being said, it is just a lathe. There is nothing particularly complicated about it. At least not at their complexity level. If you can manufacture machine tools you can make one very easily. If you don't have the manufacturing capability you won't.
The reason i'm saying this is because "free as in freedom" and "open source" are properties of plans / source code. If you happen to have a lathe factory, the lack of a lathe plan is not going to stop you. You are just going to design one for yourself. And if you don't have a factory which can make a lathe, then why do you care about plans for a lathe being open source?
I guess the factory itself could be "community owned". If you have a business plan, or a large pile of cash, now is the time to approach them that you want to buy everything from them. But I'm not sure how "community owned" would even work for this use case.
Basically what I'm saying this is hardware, not software. The terms you use don't make much sense in this case.