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Beling & Lübke Machine Tools

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, a number of small milling machines and precision grinders. The Type DP photographed below and dating from the 1930s, was a special machine intended for use in toolrooms where their was a need to cut high precision metric and inch threads - hence the unusual fitting of twin leadscrews, one for each measurement system. With the fitting of dedicated leadscrews the number of changewheels required was greatly reduced and the resulting accumulated error in pitch largely eliminated. The lathe had a particularly neat, built-in drive system that (cleverly) used 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.
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. Double leadscrew lathes are rare though Barnes, in America, manufactured one for many years though its purpose was simply to provide an 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 separate countershaft

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

Even this late 1930s precision Beling & Lübke had a self-contained drive system - at the time an unusual fitting on this class of lathe. 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 and compound table but a swivelling top-slide as well. With a lack of 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 the Beling & Lübke as being manufactured in 1900. However, judging by the appearance of the tailstock - and other detail  - it could be made 10 or more years earlier.

A Beling & Lübke of 1928--though the belt drive to the power-feeds drive shaft was, by then, an uncommon fitting

A small cylindrical grinder

Beling & Lübke horizontal milling machine - with a robust dovetail overarm and power feed to the table - from the late 1930s.

A catalogue page from the period 1900 to 1914 showing a simple plain-turning lathe (available with centre heights of 105, 125 and 155 mm and with a self-contained drive system) and a small vertical milling machine with the benefit of quill feed to the head.

A small Beling & Lübke cylindrical grinder--resident in the UK. Not the complex, superbly built, overhead drive system