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Chasing acollet for an early Thiel 158

kwijibo99

Plastic
Joined
May 4, 2010
Location
Melbourne, Australia
Hello all,
I'm not sure if this is the correct place for this post but as it relates to a euro mill it seemed to be appropriate.
I have an early Thiel Duplex 158 which I believe dates to the mid to late 1950's. Unlike the later 158's which have an MT5 spindle my early model has the same apparently unique spindle as the 58 which is more like a lathe collet spindle.
The collets have the same dimensions as a DIN 6341 Typ 386E (Weiler I think) but with a 31mm dia and an 18TPI buttress thread which is an unusual combination of metric and imperial standards (see photo below).

Thiel 158 Duplex Collet.jpg

The machine came with a selection of horizontal, stub and shell mill arbours and a near complete set of imperial collets from 1/8" to 1" but unfortunately the 1/2" was missing. I have seen tooling for these machines come up on German eBay only half a dozen times in the five years I've been looking and the sellers often will not ship outside Germany or Europe. I have been lucky enough to get a set of metric collets, drill chuck arbour and MT2 & 3 adaptors from eBay but a 1/2" collet still avoids me.

I thought it might be worth putting a post up here in the hope that perhaps someone out there might know of somewhere or someone who might be able to help me find this elusive 1/2" collet.
Cheers,
Greg.
 
Greg,
Just an idea, but if you have invested that much time in looking for one without success, maybe you should go about it a different way and order one that is ground to size. The 386E seems to be a design that is not too difficult to procure new so you might be able to go to the source and have them open up a standard metric one a bit.

Alan
 
Are you sure it does not have MT5
Isn`t there a sleeve stuck in the MT5 spindle
They can be real tight
A picture might reveale something

Peter from holland

If it was MT5 there would be an unlocking ring on the nose I would expect ,Those collets above look smaller than normal Thiel 158 collets


On edit ,if they will hold 1" they must be similar.
 
Hello and thanks for your replies, sorry it has taken so long to respond, I have been away camping with my family for easter.

Alan, the 386E has a 32X1.8 thread and I don't think there would be enough material to grind one down and rethread it to 18TPI.

Slektning, I usually search for Thiel and Ruhla and had seen that listing, unfortunately they are for the vertical spindle of a Model 58 which used a smaller size collet than the horizontal spindle.
The early 158 (like mine) has the same size spindle in both the horizontal and vertical heads which is the same as the 58 horizontal spindle. My apologies, I should have been more specific in my original post.

Peter, I am fairly certain that my mill doesn’t have the MT5 spindle with a sleeve. I have copies of two different 158 Duplex manuals, one for the earlier model with a single motor for both spindle and feed drive (no rapid traverse) and one for the later model with separate spindle and feed motors. The spindle information from both the early (left) and later(right) manuals is as follows:

Thiel 158 Duplex Spindle Early Manual.jpg Thiel 158 Duplex Spindle Later Manual.jpg

The earlier manual does not specifically mention the additional taper sleeve and withdrawal nut but does seem to show it in the diagram, the later manual mentions both (items 1 & 5) so neither of these has helped much in this area.

Unfortunately this is the best photo I have of my horizontal spindle, but it does show both the internal taper for tooling and collets as in my first post and the external taper for larger chucks (it would be nice to get one of these too one day).

Thiel 158 Duplex Spindle.JPG

If there is an additional sleeve it blends seamlessly with the external taper and I can see no sign of it. There is definitely no parallel section or withdrawal nut as shown in either manual. The vertical spindle is identical to the horizontal spindle.

The lathes.co.uk site has a lot of pictures relating to the Thiel 158 duplex, one of which shows an array of tooling.

Thiel 158 Duplex Tooling.jpg

I suspect these to be for a very early machine similar to mine as there are no MT5 adaptor sleeves shown. The only item in this photo I can’t identify is the circular plate in the middle with four holes.

Sable, as mentioned above, the later manual mentions a withdrawal nut but there is nothing like this on my spindle. The collets are comparable in size to a 5C.

I will try to get some better photos of both spindles and post them tonight.
Cheers,
Greg.

Edit: I just had a look at the lathes.co.uk site and there has been an update since I last visited (http://www.lathes.co.uk/thiel158/page3.html).
There are now some close up shots of the MT5 spindle nose both with and without an MT5 adaptor installed and it looks quite different to my machine.
 
Last edited:
Hello again,
I just took some better photos of my 158 Duplex, it is machine serial number 158366 which I assume is the 366th machine made making it fairly early.

Horizontal spindle nose, it must have had a chuck mounted at some point in time because of the galling on the outer taper, thankfully the internal surfaces are in better condition.
Thiel 158 Duplex Horizontal Spindle Nose.jpg

Vertical spindle nose, the external diameter of the spindle is smaller than that on the horizontal spindle but internal dimensions are identical.
Thiel 158 Duplex Vertical Spindle Nose.jpg

A better photo of a collet.
Thiel 158 Duplex Collet.jpg

The vertical spindle hollow drawbar with a collet attached.
Thiel 158 Duplex Vertical Drawbar & Collet.jpg
Cheers,
Greg.
 
maybe the solution is to have it wire edm cut if you have a doubble of one size. Unless having an original is the point? Btw i saw your video on youtube. Great video!
 
so not sure if you will see this, but did you have any luck finding the type?
I have a Thiel 58 and it has the same collet type, id love to know what it is or where to get some.
 
G'day Yoodles,
Long story short, not really. As best I can tell the Thiel collet is more or less unique to Thiel.
I believe the Model 58 has two different size collets, a larger one for use in the horizontal spindle and a smaller version for the vertical spindle.
The earlier Model 158 machines use the same collet as the Model 58 horizontal spindle (larger collet) in both the vertical and horizontal spindles.

They do occasionally show up on German ebay but not often.
If you shoot me a PM I can email you a copy of the Model 58 manual, it's in German but has a lot of pictures so quite useful.
Cheers,
Greg.
 
Hi Greg,
I am currently looking at buying a Thiel 158 and stumbled across your thread as part of my research. This is probably a dumb question but I wanted to make sure that I understood your thread properly.
Does it mean that without a set of the specific Thiel 158 collets (which are difficult to find) it is not possible to hold normal cutting tools (end mills etc.). Also it is difficult to get some adaptor to allow the use of other collets(e.g ER32, R8, MT 4 etc)?
The machine I’m interested in, and plan to travel to see this weekend, looks great in the photos but doesn’t come with any collets, fitting etc. So if I understand correctly it could be a deal breaker :(
Pete
 
Depends
If it is a MT5 spindle you can find plenty of tooling
Even adaptors MT5 to Iso 30 I presume
If it is a direct collet type you have to find some collets or find someone with a ID grinder and adapt the spindle nose for another collettype
I would do C5 then if possible

You can recognize the MT5 machines as they have 2 drawbars A tube with a big round piece on top for the MT5 and a solid for the tooling or collets that fit into the MT5

Peter
 
G'day Pete,
Apologies for my slow reply, it's probably a bit academic now.
I think MT5 is the most commonly found taper in the 158 and only early machines have the taper that is the topic of this thread. As far as I'm aware, all the later machines including those with separate feed motors are MT5.

The original Thiel MT5 tool holders for use with tapered tooling (MT1 to MT4, ISO30) have a retained draw bolt with a square head which would eject the tool from the taper when loosened. The second drawbar mentioned by Peter above was actually an extension shaft used to reach the square bolt and not a drawbar as such, I'm not sure if this was usually left in the spindle while in use or removed. The collet based tool holder was only retained by the hollow drawbar. The large ring nut on the front of the tool holders is used to eject the holder from the main MT5 spindle taper.
The photos below are not mine but ones I've collected from a few sites around the web, hopefully they help make my dodgey explanations a bit clearer.

Thiel Duplex 158 MT5 Tooling 1.jpg Thiel Duplex 158 MT5 Tooling 2.jpg

This is a really bad copy of some Thiel MT5 tooling info which might also be useful.

Thiel Duplex 158 MT5 Tooling Brochure 01a.jpgThiel Duplex 158 MT5 Tooling Brochure 01b.jpg

There is also some great Thiel info to be found on the lathes.co.uk website.

If the machine you are looking at has the earlier proprietary taper I wouldn't consider this a show stopper, particularly for hobby use as it's quite easy to reproduce and I've made or modified a number tools to fit it.
Cheers,
Greg.
 
Last edited:
G'day Pete,
Apologies for my slow reply, it's probably a bit academic now.
I think MT5 is the most commonly found taper in the 158 and only early machines have the taper that is the topic of this thread. As far as I'm aware, all the later machines including those with separate feed motors are MT5.

The original Thiel MT5 tool holders for use with tapered tooling (MT1 to MT4, ISO30) have a retained draw bolt with a square head which would eject the tool from the taper when loosened. The second drawbar mentioned by Peter above was actually an extension shaft used to reach the square bolt and not a drawbar as such, I'm not sure if this was usually left in the spindle while in use or removed. The collet based tool holder was only retained by the hollow drawbar. The large ring nut on the front of the tool holders is used to eject the holder from the main MT5 spindle taper.
The photos below are not mine but ones I've collected from a few sites around the web, hopefully they help make my dodgey explanations a bit clearer.

View attachment 268350 View attachment 268349

This is a really bad copy of some Thiel MT5 tooling info which might also be useful.

View attachment 268348View attachment 268347

There is also some great Thiel info to be found on the lathes.co.uk website.

If the machine you are looking at has the earlier proprietary taper I wouldn't consider this a show stopper, particularly for hobby use as it's quite easy to reproduce and I've made or modified a number tools to fit it.
Cheers,
Greg.

Hi Greg,

Thanks for the reply. It’s almost academic now but not quite. Below is a link to the machine’s eBay advertisement. It is an early model without the separate feed motor. The spindle looks similar to that described by you and Peter (but with the solid extension shaft...presumed missing). Do I understand correctly that this is the MT5 compatible spindle and not the version found on the 58 and first 158s?

Thiel 158 Vertical Milling Machine with Work Light | eBay
 
Depends
If it is a MT5 spindle you can find plenty of tooling
Even adaptors MT5 to Iso 30 I presume
If it is a direct collet type you have to find some collets or find someone with a ID grinder and adapt the spindle nose for another collettype
I would do C5 then if possible

You can recognize the MT5 machines as they have 2 drawbars A tube with a big round piece on top for the MT5 and a solid for the tooling or collets that fit into the MT5

Peter

Thanks Peter,

Do you thinK it is the MT5 version in this link (looks like the one you describe I think).

Error page | eBay

Peter
 
G'day Pete,
Apologies for my slow reply, it's probably a bit academic now.
I think MT5 is the most commonly found taper in the 158 and only early machines have the taper that is the topic of this thread. As far as I'm aware, all the later machines including those with separate feed motors are MT5.

The original Thiel MT5 tool holders for use with tapered tooling (MT1 to MT4, ISO30) have a retained draw bolt with a square head which would eject the tool from the taper when loosened. The second drawbar mentioned by Peter above was actually an extension shaft used to reach the square bolt and not a drawbar as such, I'm not sure if this was usually left in the spindle while in use or removed. The collet based tool holder was only retained by the hollow drawbar. The large ring nut on the front of the tool holders is used to eject the holder from the main MT5 spindle taper.
The photos below are not mine but ones I've collected from a few sites around the web, hopefully they help make my dodgey explanations a bit clearer.

View attachment 268350 View attachment 268349

This is a really bad copy of some Thiel MT5 tooling info which might also be useful.

View attachment 268348View attachment 268347

There is also some great Thiel info to be found on the lathes.co.uk website.

If the machine you are looking at has the earlier proprietary taper I wouldn't consider this a show stopper, particularly for hobby use as it's quite easy to reproduce and I've made or modified a number tools to fit it.
Cheers,
Greg.

Hi Greg,

Thanks for the answer and explanation It’s almost academic but not quite. The machine I’m interested in is an early 158 (no separate feed motor) but looks to have the spindle you and Peter describe and sent photos of. So this is the MT5 version and not the early in house version found on the 58 and very early 158?

Hopefully you can see the photos in the link below.


Thiel 158 Vertical Milling Machine with Work Light | eBay
 
G'day Pete,
Apologies for my slow reply, it's probably a bit academic now.
I think MT5 is the most commonly found taper in the 158 and only early machines have the taper that is the topic of this thread. As far as I'm aware, all the later machines including those with separate feed motors are MT5.

The original Thiel MT5 tool holders for use with tapered tooling (MT1 to MT4, ISO30) have a retained draw bolt with a square head which would eject the tool from the taper when loosened. The second drawbar mentioned by Peter above was actually an extension shaft used to reach the square bolt and not a drawbar as such, I'm not sure if this was usually left in the spindle while in use or removed. The collet based tool holder was only retained by the hollow drawbar. The large ring nut on the front of the tool holders is used to eject the holder from the main MT5 spindle taper.
The photos below are not mine but ones I've collected from a few sites around the web, hopefully they help make my dodgey explanations a bit clearer.

View attachment 268350 View attachment 268349

This is a really bad copy of some Thiel MT5 tooling info which might also be useful.

View attachment 268348View attachment 268347

There is also some great Thiel info to be found on the lathes.co.uk website.

If the machine you are looking at has the earlier proprietary taper I wouldn't consider this a show stopper, particularly for hobby use as it's quite easy to reproduce and I've made or modified a number tools to fit it.
Cheers,
Greg.

Hmmm, link appears to be dead.

Can you see it now?

Thiel 158 Vertical Milling Machine with Work Light | eBay
 
Yep, can see it now.
It's a bit hard to tell but I think it might have the early spindle not the MT5. The serial number is about 60 newer than mine so pretty early.
As I mentioned, this is not a show stopper as the taper is quite easy to make. I've seen an ISO30 adaptor and making an ER30 or ER40 chuck for direct mounting should be easy enough.
Good luck and let us know how you go.
Cheers,
Greg.
 








 
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