BXA / AXA Compatibility Question

[projectnut]

Basically, there are (expensive) American made tool posts and there are (less expensive) Chinese tool posts.
Those are your choices. The tool post and holder set that I bought for my current lathe is a Phase II, which works
fine, but the parts were pretty crudely machined, and at least now they seem overpriced. Whether their quality improved
when the price went up I don't know. I have no experience with PM, though there are a bunch of PM owners around here
that could probably give you some feedback. You could post a question on the PM sub-forum in you want. If you
do a search, there are a bunch of posts about various tool post brands, though some stand out for decent quality at
a reasonable price. The All Industrial stuff I mentioned above is one of them.

BXA Tool Post

Guys while back I had posted a question about which tool post to buy on poor mans budget and receive lot good suggestions.So I went after Bostar,but they only sell kits.I really don’t need another parting tool nor boring nor knit long.I just want the tool post I have some bxa tool...

www.hobby-machinist.com

It would be interesting to know the age of your Phase II tool post. I have an AXA on my 10" lathe and a BXA on my 13" lathe. The AXA is a little over 20 years old, and the BXA is in the 30 year old range. They're both excellent quality. In fact the BXA is so close to the Aloris it's hard to tell the difference.

 

[Nogoingback]

I put my Logan into service 4-5 years ago and I bought the set then. The quality is nothing like an Aloris. For example, the boring bar
holder has a hole in it that is quite rough and varies a fair bit in diameter along it's length. I also have an Aloris boring bar holder and
there is no comparison: it's properly machined. The surfaces where they knocked of the corners of the tool holders look like they
were done by hand on a belt sander. By comparison, the All Industrial holders I've bought really do look as nice as Aloris: the surface
finish is so nice they look as though they've been ground on all sides. Having said that, the Phase II stuff all does the job (once I
disassembled and cleaned all the swarf out of the tool post). Now that I think of it, I have another Phase II boring bar holder I bought
used off eBay. It's probably older than the set I bought, and it's nicer. Maybe my set was made on a Friday.

 

[Tozguy]

My Phase II BXA has been going strong for close to 10 years now. Prices then were much better then than today probably due to tariffs or other factors cause there is nothing to improve on mine. It is well finished (at least it looks better than I do) and leaves nothing more to be desired. So much so that I would say 98.35 % of all holders are Phase II.