BuildPro Ball Lock Bolt

Has anyone here made their own ball lock bolts? In particular, I'm looking at this design ... Ball Lock Bolts

Since these things run about $30 each, I would like to machine my own. Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks - Dig

digadv said:

Has anyone here made their own ball lock bolts? In particular, I'm looking at this design ... Ball Lock Bolts

Since these things run about $30 each, I would like to machine my own. Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks - Dig

Click to expand...

Have you tried McMaster ?

i've had a drawing in my little shop notebook for like 5 years haha.
i just through bolt my fixtures down but have been wanting to make a dozen or two ball lock style hold downs since i got my big table, so i can stop crawling and contorting myself under the table to thread a nut on.
maybe this thread will provide the necessary motivation that i apparently require [emoji854]

should be as simple as some od turning, drill a hole, run a tap through, a few cross holes.. drop a few properly sized ball bearings in, maybe a little compression spring and something threaded to push the ball bearings out.. dead simple. get it done and post pics!


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digger doug said:

Have you tried McMaster ?

Click to expand...

Doug, i've actually poured over mcmaster's site looking for some and couldn't find anything that would work. they probably have something but if so i couldn't find them.


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vanguard machine said:

should be as simple as some od turning, drill a hole, run a tap through, a few cross holes.. drop a few properly sized ball bearings in, maybe a little compression spring and something threaded to push the ball bearings out.. dead simple. get it done and post pics!

Click to expand...

There are several designs out there. Without having actually seen one of these in person, I'm trying to figure out the buildpro design. They sell this refresh kit ... BUILDPRO Ball Lock Bolt Kit - 30D353'|'TMS5101 - Grainger and I'm trying to figure out where the O-rings come into play. In one of the buildpro designs they use an exteranl o-ring to retain the ball bearings while I believe later designs do not use this approach.

Anyone have a buildpro version?

digadv said:

There are several designs out there. Without having actually seen one of these in person, I'm trying to figure out the buildpro design. They sell this refresh kit ... BUILDPRO Ball Lock Bolt Kit - 30D353'|'TMS5101 - Grainger and I'm trying to figure out where the O-rings come into play. In one of the buildpro designs they use an exteranl o-ring to retain the ball bearings while I believe later designs do not use this approach.

Anyone have a buildpro version?

Click to expand...

It's pretty common to use o-rings to retain stuff, it probably has one seated in a groove adjacent to the balls to keep them from moving out of position when the mechanism is loose. Its use case in this way would be a simple energizer, and if properly designed would act like the spring mentioned in post #3.