Sherline mill conversin to cnc for cutting wax

Jewelry Discussion
1

Hello,

If any one could help me out that would be great. I am looking to
take a Sherline mill that I have and turn it in to a wax cutting
cnc. I am looking at adding Flash Cut cnc motors, 4th axis, 10,000
rpm spindle to make this a cnc for cutting wax. The companies that
are selling the add on parts say that they sell Sherline cnc
machines to jewelers all the time.

My questions are, do any of you have a setup like this?

Is 10,000 rpm spindle fast enough?

What are your opinions on Rhino cam and cad?
What do you use for a mount to hold your wax?

I tried finding previous posts but didn’t find what I was looking
for.

Thanks for your help,
Dan

2

I run the spindle on my cnc machine at about 10,000 RPM for cutting
wax.

3 
I am looking to take a Sherline mill that I have and turn it in to
a wax cutting cnc. I am looking at adding Flash Cut cnc motors, 4th
axis, 10,000 rpm spindle to make this a cnc for cutting wax. The
companies that are selling the add on parts say that they sell
Sherline cnc machines to jewelers all the time.

That’s true, it’s a very popular machine for this. Flashcut’s system
is pretty nice, but you can also get the motors and driver from
Sherline, along with a free utility that runs your G-code programs in
real time on a Linux computer.

My questions are, do any of you have a setup like this? 

Is 10,000 rpm spindle fast enough?

It’s fast enough for most things, although the very smallest tools
would appreciate more speed. You don’t really have to replace the
spindle to go that fast. Sherline sells a replacement pulley set that
allows you to get 10k rpm with the stock spindle. It’s not hard to
mount a different spindle, like a NSK Astro-E, on the Sherline if you
want to go a lot faster.

What are your opinions on Rhino cam and cad?

While they aren’t jewelry-specific programs, they are highly capable
general-purpose modeling and machining applications with a
user-friendly shared interface which certainly can produce jewelry
as well as all sorts of other things.

What do you use for a mount to hold your wax?

The rotary table that Sherline makes can hold a variety of 3 and
4-jaw chucks. If the part is too delicate to hold in a chuck, one can
make or find a fixture that’s held in the chuck to hold the wax item.
In the case of a ring, for instance, that would be an inside
expanding mandrel.

Andrew Werby