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Author Topic: Oliver, How much would it cost to make a tube factory that you like?  (Read 22894 times)

RMoore

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Re: Oliver, How much would it cost to make a tube factory that you like?
« Reply #15 on: December 10, 2006, 10:50:27 AM »

Oliver Archut wrote on Sat, 09 December 2006 23:22

 

Here is a link for some Chinese tubes... Take a look at the pics and judge for yourself...

http://www.ks-hifi.com/artical/shuguang/shuguang.htm


Best regards,



Interesting pics!

Some years ago I bought some tubes from a retired TV repairman - he said his wife had done that type of work assembling tubes at a Philips plant here in Holland,


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Oliver Archut

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Re: Oliver, How much would it cost to make a tube factory that you like?
« Reply #16 on: December 10, 2006, 10:35:07 PM »

Hello James,

vacuum tubes are nothing else than modified light bulbs so the manufacturing is related and the "Pumping Mills" of the light bulb was incorporated into the commercial tube production.
All radio tubes were made with those sealing machines and only some specialty tubes were made on "Straight Pumping Stands".

Most of the  machinery in the Chinese factory is old Philips/GEC origin, but most of their Getter Mills are state of the art, diffusion pumps on every position with a mechanical roughening pump. Theoretical they should be able to make tubes that are out of this world, but there is no improvement in "Made in China" tubes over the last 10 years or so.
Even Telefunken never had those very high vacuum machines (their mills used rotary pumps) their tubes were still light years better, even today nearly 30 years after they stopped production!
The over all impression of the plant in China is a kind of dirty and to quotes of former Telefunken workers the production floor was cleaner than a surgery room in a hospital.

Most high volume tubes like the EL84 were automatically assembled but specialty tubes like AC701 were 100% handmade.

Thanks for sharing your experience of "Glass Working", if you have more info and pics, that would be highly appreciated.
All of the in-production tubes have big problems with stressed glass that was not properly tempered or sealed. Aside the glass and the raw material issues with in production tubes, the filament bears the biggest challenge to make those tubes usable in studio application. Most east european tubes have issues with magnesia vapor after a 500h lifetime.
With your knowledge in bulb manufacturing I guess you understand the difficulty of making double helix filaments, another staple of most Telefunken tubes, there is no in production tube that has that standard feature of most NOS western type tubes.

Best regards,
index.php/fa/3846/0/
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Oliver Archut
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James Craft

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Re: Oliver, How much would it cost to make a tube factory that you like?
« Reply #17 on: December 17, 2006, 05:51:33 PM »

Hi Oliver

I have no pics of our operation, that was a no-no. Somewhere though I think I have all my glass manuals, which has a ton of info on glass technology and it's good stuff, might be some other stuff too. I think these are stored in an unfinished house I own, might take a few months to find them though as there is a ton of junk in there. PM me some contact info and when I get the chance I'll try to round them up and get you a copy.

JamesC
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Oliver Archut

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Re: Oliver, How much would it cost to make a tube factory that you like?
« Reply #18 on: December 19, 2006, 10:12:14 PM »

Hello James,

I have all the Telefunken and Philips glass working manual on the needed glass for vacuum tubes, but thank you for your offer.
Glass working especially vacuum work is always great to see and I thought a bulb mill would be cool to see in relations to a getter mill.

Attached find a pic of the standard light bulb mill of the 1960s. Funny thing to add, technical it is possible to build filament lamps that would last 100ooo hour plus and we still have to buy the 1000 hour ones...

Best regards,
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Oliver Archut
www.tab-funkenwerk.com

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Mike O

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Re: Oliver, How much would it cost to make a tube factory that you like?
« Reply #19 on: December 19, 2006, 10:59:45 PM »

Oliver Archut wrote on Wed, 20 December 2006 03:12

 Funny thing to add, technical it is possible to build filament lamps that would last 100ooo hour plus and we still have to buy the 1000 hour ones...

Best regards,



Here is an example of a fairly well documented one.http://www.centennialbulb.org/
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James Craft

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Re: Oliver, How much would it cost to make a tube factory that you like?
« Reply #20 on: December 20, 2006, 04:32:53 AM »

Oliver Archut wrote on Wed, 20 December 2006 03:12

Hello James,

I have all the Telefunken and Philips glass working manual on the needed glass for vacuum tubes, but thank you for your offer.
Glass working especially vacuum work is always great to see and I thought a bulb mill would be cool to see in relations to a getter mill.

Attached find a pic of the standard light bulb mill of the 1960s. Funny thing to add, technical it is possible to build filament lamps that would last 100ooo hour plus and we still have to buy the 1000 hour ones...

Best regards,

Somewhere I have a bag of long life 194's I made. The engineer only needed 100 and I ran about 1500-2000. These were not put into production because they lasted too long, go figure?

Here is link my buddy sent me on the making of a triode:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_eLO0exato
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Oliver Archut

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Re: Oliver, How much would it cost to make a tube factory that you like?
« Reply #21 on: December 24, 2006, 01:07:02 PM »

Hello James,

Philips does have some cool tools for making vacuum glass stuff. The movie link for the audion triode is pretty cool and yes it is possible to make tubes by hand.
Over the years I talked to several engineers as well as prototype assemblers that worked at Telefunken and Philips/Valvo and of course the RFT guys (bought some of their prototype equipment off ebay last year).
All what is needed is a glass lathe, the right materials and a steady hand.
In my collection I have a bunch of the Telefunknen "Nullserien" tubes, the first handmade production samples that are working perfectly compared to the later production versions. Only problem is the high cost of making them.

Here is a pic of the final Version of the Telefunken EL34, the production/development file "Freigabevorschrift" clearly states that they were copying the Philips/Valvo EL34 and did some changes to it because they could not get them identical in technical specs with same dimensions.
Today after having both, the Telefunken and Valvo drawings and activation manuals it seems that the only difference was the activation procedure... and the sound of Telefunkens is generally thought to be smoother!

Best regards,index.php/fa/3921/0/
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Oliver Archut
www.tab-funkenwerk.com

We are so advanced, that we can develop technology that can determine how much damage the earth has taken from the development of that technology.
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