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- Hacker News
- Tip of the hat to Australian Harold Clisby. https://www.lathes.co.uk/clisby/index.html
Well done sir.
by johnohara - I'd like to throw an idea to those who know better than I do.
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.
- Real bummer I have their manual lathe and mill and have made a lot of things it would have been impossible to make without the ability to machine (even at small scale their machines could do).
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.
by jordanb - That's a shame. Though they might get bought out by someone who will keep the products in production?
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.)
by a96 - I own a lathe and mill from them, both converted to CNC. Sadly their products have changed little in 30+ years. Their precision parts have a use in some applications but it's vastly overshadowed by the cheap parts available from Asia (including India now).
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.
by morio - My wife is in manufacturing and although not in US, working for a company having production in US, EU, Asia etc. Her 1-minute comments why it's increasingly difficult to produce something in EU and US.
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.
by obscurette - There’s some other threads in this discussion bemoaning the lack of diy machine builders…and, I am really unclear how this Sherline issue is related? To me, this is a question of value for money. Sherline products were always interesting, but also nowhere near competitive as machines. With controllers like masso and acorn available, converting a mill like a grizzly, precision Mathews or even a Bridgeport are just way more value for money.
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.
by abakker - Sad news. First, Openbuilds now this.
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.
by Ccecil