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Beling & Lübke Machine Tools

Beling & Lübke Grinders and Miller Page 2


Founded in 1872, and not widely known outside its Native Germany, the firm of Beling & Lübke made a range of conventional backgeared, screwcutting and plain-turning precision lathes and several designs of impressively-constructed small milling machines and precision grinders.
The Type DP lathe, photographed below and dating from the 1930s, was a special machine intended for use in toolrooms - where there was a need to cut a mixture of high-precision metric and inch threads - hence the unusual fitting of twin leadscrews, one for each measurement system. With the use of dedicated leadscrews the number of changewheels required was greatly reduced - and so the resulting accumulated error in pitch largely eliminated. The lathe had a particularly neat, built-in drive system that used (cleverly) just a lightly modified headstock-end support leg. The bed was not only deep, but enormously wide, with its V and flat ways extending in front and behind the headstock to allow the long saddle to overlap it and so provide maximum support to the cutting tool when near the headstock spindle.
Power sliding and surfacing feeds were driven by the second leadscrew - geared to the first - with selection by an apron-mounted quadrant lever and individual engagement by (rather inconvenient) wind-in-and-out clutches. While lathes with "double-leadscrew" system are rare, Barnes, in America, did manufactured one for many years - though in this case its purpose was simply to provide a cheap to construct and easy way of reversing the saddle drive.
Running in bronze headstock bearings lubricated though wicks dipping into oil sumps mounted on top of the headstock (and covered by flip-open covers) the spindle carried what appears to have been a rather small nose thread, -though the designer took care to make the 3-step flat-belt come pulley as wide as possible.
If you have a Beling & Lübke machine tool of any kind, or further information about the company, the writer would be pleased to hear from you..

Beling & Lübke 6-inch Type DP precision screwcutting lathe from the 1930s--with a neat, self-contained drive system

Beling & Lübke DP on a heavier headstock plinth stand and intended for drive by a remote countershaft

Another Beling & Lübke from the 1930 but this time with a rudimentary screwcutting gearbox and a useful "third-lever control" for engaging and disengaging the feeds


Becoming more modern: this late 1930s precision Beling & Lübke lathe had (like the competing lathes from the Leinen and G. Boley Companies) a self-contained drive system For its intended use - as a toolmakers lathe - the machine had an enormous centre height as well  as power-feed and screwcutting to the top slide.

Obviously based on the lathe immediately above, this Beling & Lübke is arranged as a multi-function machine with a horizontal miller built on the headstock end of the bed and an "overhead" to power toolpost-mounted high speed milling and grinding attachments. To give the operator space to work the motor-countershaft unit has been moved to the tailstock end of the bed.. The milling assembly appears to have not just the usual rise-and-fall movement and compound table but a swivelling top-slide as well. With no over-arm support for the tool-holding arbor the machine would have been limited in its ability to remove metal quickly.


Beling & Lübke Type DW lathe from the 1920s

A lathe dated by Beling & Lübke as being manufactured in 1900. However, judging by the appearance of the tailstock - and other detail  - it could be made ten or more years earlier.

A Beling & Lübke of 1928--the use of both belt and gear drive to the power feed drive shaft was, by then, becoming less popular

An earlier pattern, precision plain-turning Beling & Lübke of circa 1910 fitted for horizontal milling

The horizontal milling attachment was catalogued as being suitable for mounting on other makes of lathe and was built along lines similar to those also found on American bench precision lathes such as Stark

Beling & Lübke Grinders and Millers - Page 2

Beling & Lübke Machine Tools
E-Mail Tony@lathes.co.uk 
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