Boley 5lz collets

The housing has been made of 7mm steel plates and two flanges. All together it is welded and later on machined. The small bores were reinforced to accommodate the inserts and keep the shafts.

I can send you photos of the original tumbler gear by e-mail.

That would be very much appreciated! And any measurements that you have readily available.

As promised below are few photos of tumbler gear manufacturing. The steel used for the wheels, shafts and spindle is 16MnCr5. They were cemented and hardened. The gear housing is from standard weldable steel. After welding the housing was machined on the lathe and the holes drilled and reamed on the milling machine to assure parallelism and the right distances in x and y axis.

Similarly I machined the holder, it is welded from three parts and finished on my lathe using face plate. All bushes are bronze, reamed after their pressing in to the holes.

Many thanks to Phil and Mike for their photos of the original tumbler gear parts! It helped me a lot.

Nice work! Very good to get some inspiration for my own build. Mine is probably going to be a bit less detailed but we will see what the future brings.

Just remembered that I had forgotten about this thread. On my next visit to the seller I actually found the missing tumbler. So then I only needed to manufacture the banjo, a lot easier!

Anyway, the lathe is now at home and up and running. Battling a bit with the draw tube, the internal threads are damaged, so I am currently trying to restore them with a home made chaser tap. Apart from that I am missing the fan and the sheet metal that protects the ways, easy enough to replace.

Could I continue the Boley 5LZ thread as I have recently purchased one. I have not used it yet as it is 3 phase and I only have 240v in the workshop. I wondered if anyone can explain how the tailstock barrel lock works because the handle on mine seems to be almost immovable, and also do I need a C spanner to undo the lock ring on the chuck?

Thanks, Mike.

Did you buy the one that was on eBay, with a bad electric gearbox? If so, congratulations, a real bargain I would say.

The tailstock barrel lock is a form of collet closer, mine is not locking very well even after cleaning, but to take it apart just unthread the handle and spin the front cap of the tailstock of.

Yes the chuck should be attached with a large threaded ring that pushes brass inserts against the spindle, so that it will not unthread as easily, as the lathe has brakes (if you bought the one with broken electric gearbox you might have an electric break through the VFD), it is a bit unsafe with just the normal threaded spindlenose.

Thanks for your reply Robert. I have sent you a p.m.