Taig Watchmakers Lathe

Watchmakers like precision. This makes perfect sense because all those gears are pounding against each other and still need to keep accurate time. When accuracy of your lathe cuts to down, so does everything else. Until now, there weren’t a lot of options to turn a Taig into a machine similar to a Swiss quality lathe. That’s all changed over the past few years. A small company in Michigan called GlockCNC.com now makes smartly done upgrades. Two upgrades in particular. First, they’ve produced there own heavy duty headstock and spindles. Why is this good news for the watchmakers and clockmakers?

Firstly, let’s look at the meaty headstock and how it attaches to the lathe. Typically, the OEM Taig lathe uses a really tiny dovetail system for it’s headstock. GlockCNC.com uses a much thicker chuck of aluminum with no “air gap” between the headstock and the bed. This allows for better energy handling from vibration. Next, let’s look at the headstock itself. If you put the OEM headstock right next to the GlockCNC headstock, you immediately seem the difference. The OEM looks almost wimpy by comparison. The GlockCNC casing has a lot more metal in it and allows for much bigger 62mm OD bearing.  This, in turn, allows for a larger spindle to be used. The fact of the matter is, that, more spindle mass equals better vibration dampening. Let’s talk about those spindles for a watchmakers lathe.

Their typical spindle has a 30mm OD and they shrink fit the bearings to the spindle. They offer ER25, ER32, ER40 and even the huge ER50 collet chuck spindles. The through hole is from .30″ to .89″, depending upon which ER spindle arbor you choose. I would suspect that most watch makers will be using the ER25 or ER32. This allows for very precision workpiece gripping. Plus, the collets are available anywhere. GlockCNC offers .0002″ TIR collets (which is about as accurate as you’ll get). On top of that, they also have adjustable ER nuts to dial out any remaining runout. Of course, if you work piece isn’t straight, then it will make it a challenge to dial out the runout. But, what can be done is make your cut, turn the piece around then use the adjustable nut to dial out the TIR.

All in all, for the watch maker, they offer the perfect setup. Plus, the price is far better than a Swiss machine. Next they offer two brushless motor options; 750 watt and 1200 watt. I can’t foresee a watchmaker needing more than the 750 watt model. According to GlockCNC.com, they can sell you the lathe complete with all their.

Videos of Taig Upgrades: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi3Hkd2DGtxcjPGdedDD9NKmWF1uF9lsO