Hello,

I'm an artist in Seattle, Washington, USA and me and some artist-type
friends have been talking. . .

A couple of them are glass blowers, and we are wondering if it's
possible to blow the glass portion of the tube, install the
electronics (either from another tube without the glass ) or from
scratch.

Does such a process entail a clean-room or something similar? Do you
think it would be possible?

We just thinking of the possibilities of what a glass blower could do
with the boring clear glass tubes in amplifiers.

Thanks,

James, Seattle

(remove the 'spamblock' to email me)

yes, it is possible to make tubes, but is it not cheap to make tubes

but if you want them to actually function, you need four things which are
more difficult than the glass blowing part:

1. women capable of doing fine assembly "close work" (men cannot handle
this, almost all tubes worldwide are assembled by females)

2. machinery capable of pulling a relatively hard vacuum

3. some rare materials such as tungsten, thorium and barium

4. technical knowledge (hire a former tube company engineer)


a clean room is not a requirement



"RainLover" wrote in message
...
Hello,

I'm an artist in Seattle, Washington, USA and me and some artist-type
friends have been talking. . .

A couple of them are glass blowers, and we are wondering if it's
possible to blow the glass portion of the tube, install the
electronics (either from another tube without the glass ) or from
scratch.

Does such a process entail a clean-room or something similar? Do you
think it would be possible?

We just thinking of the possibilities of what a glass blower could do
with the boring clear glass tubes in amplifiers.

Thanks,

James, Seattle

(remove the 'spamblock' to email me)

arizona cowboy wrote:

yes, it is possible to make tubes, but is it not cheap to make tubes

but if you want them to actually function, you need four things which are
more difficult than the glass blowing part:

1. women capable of doing fine assembly "close work" (men cannot handle
this, almost all tubes worldwide are assembled by females)

2. machinery capable of pulling a relatively hard vacuum

3. some rare materials such as tungsten, thorium and barium

4. technical knowledge (hire a former tube company engineer)

Don't forget the RF heating apparatus to seal the bits of tubes together
whilst a hard vacuum is being pulled, the gettering, etc, etc, etc.


a clean room is not a requirement

Dust or dandruff trapped inside a tube could give off gas.
I'd prefer a fairly clean room.

There is a guy in Japan doing his own tubes in his backyard,
which in japan is usually a very small space, and they look like small
lightbulbs, perhaps with re-cycled parts within,
and they have nicely decorated ceramic bases, very japanezo.

Try google, vacuum , tubes, handmade.

The sound is OK, from what the guy says.

Patrick Turner.




"RainLover" wrote in message
...
Hello,

I'm an artist in Seattle, Washington, USA and me and some artist-type
friends have been talking. . .

A couple of them are glass blowers, and we are wondering if it's
possible to blow the glass portion of the tube, install the
electronics (either from another tube without the glass ) or from
scratch.

Does such a process entail a clean-room or something similar? Do you
think it would be possible?

We just thinking of the possibilities of what a glass blower could do
with the boring clear glass tubes in amplifiers.

Thanks,

James, Seattle

(remove the 'spamblock' to email me)

I would think that sourcing the metals would be the hardest part,aside
from designing a fairly usable tube,that's hopefully somewhat
consistant.
I wouldn't think you could just slap some metal bits into a vacuum,and
get a usable triode. Forming the metal plate(s),and the tiny grid wire
might be challenging,but atleast you guys seem to have the glass part
down.
There's a neat glass company here in Portland,I remember seeing a bit
on TV about thier shop,and different art pieces..Pretty cool looking
stuff!
I'd love to see some neat colored EL34's or something!
Maybe you could make tube "sleeves",maybe some sort of tube heatsink
sleeves..
I dunno. I think you should make some neat looking tubes! even if they
aren't the greatest sounding things ever,it would be cool to have a
small amp with tye-dye tubes glowing happily!


Patrick Turner wrote in message ...
arizona cowboy wrote:

yes, it is possible to make tubes, but is it not cheap to make tubes

but if you want them to actually function, you need four things which are
more difficult than the glass blowing part:

1. women capable of doing fine assembly "close work" (men cannot handle
this, almost all tubes worldwide are assembled by females)

2. machinery capable of pulling a relatively hard vacuum

3. some rare materials such as tungsten, thorium and barium

4. technical knowledge (hire a former tube company engineer)

Don't forget the RF heating apparatus to seal the bits of tubes together
whilst a hard vacuum is being pulled, the gettering, etc, etc, etc.


a clean room is not a requirement

Dust or dandruff trapped inside a tube could give off gas.
I'd prefer a fairly clean room.

There is a guy in Japan doing his own tubes in his backyard,
which in japan is usually a very small space, and they look like small
lightbulbs, perhaps with re-cycled parts within,
and they have nicely decorated ceramic bases, very japanezo.

Try google, vacuum , tubes, handmade.

The sound is OK, from what the guy says.

Patrick Turner.




"RainLover" wrote in message
...
Hello,

I'm an artist in Seattle, Washington, USA and me and some artist-type
friends have been talking. . .

A couple of them are glass blowers, and we are wondering if it's
possible to blow the glass portion of the tube, install the
electronics (either from another tube without the glass ) or from
scratch.

Does such a process entail a clean-room or something similar? Do you
think it would be possible?

We just thinking of the possibilities of what a glass blower could do
with the boring clear glass tubes in amplifiers.

Thanks,

James, Seattle

(remove the 'spamblock' to email me)

You'd need high vacuum equipment from Ebay
such as a diffusion pump backed by a 2 stage mechanical pump.
a small induction heater like those used for heating bearings and
sleeves for shrink fitting.

Glass to metal seals use alloys like Kovar and Invar.
Internal components would use nickel, tungsten, copper and alloys
like 2% thoriated tungsten for filaments (thin TIG welder electrodes)
for directly heated valves. You'd also need barium getters to coat
the glass to capture any outgassing from components.

It should be possible to do with secondhand equipment
but an expert's advice would be vital.

Mark Harriss

Nothing40 wrote:

I would think that sourcing the metals would be the hardest part,aside
from designing a fairly usable tube, that's hopefully somewhat
consistant.
I wouldn't think you could just slap some metal bits into a vacuum,and
get a usable triode. Forming the metal plate(s),and the tiny grid wire
might be challenging,but atleast you guys seem to have the glass part
down.
There's a neat glass company here in Portland,I remember seeing a bit
on TV about thier shop,and different art pieces..Pretty cool looking
stuff!
I'd love to see some neat colored EL34's or something!
Maybe you could make tube "sleeves",maybe some sort of tube heatsink
sleeves..
I dunno. I think you should make some neat looking tubes! even if they
aren't the greatest sounding things ever,it would be cool to have a
small amp with tye-dye tubes glowing happily!

The biggest problem with making tubes is the cathode technology.
A recent article in Electronics World spelled out some of the history
of the cathode, and its a great read, with some pertinent comments
about directly hated cathodes and indirectly heated cathodes.

But once you get the metal work done for grids and plate,
and mica discs, the glass work is pretty easy.
At transmitting stations, the large tubes used have water cooled anodes
with circulating water and heat exchangers, and vacuum pumps going constantly
to maintain the vacuum.
One could do something similar at home,
so that you had one big fat triode like an 833 or PL805,
and there is no need for glass construction.

But the cathode is the killer thing to get right.
Men can wind grid coils, its not something strictly for the women,
but tube making was a sit down trade, like sewing garments,
and it attracted few men.
If they made the tubes they used to make in much higher numbers,
it'd all be done with robots, humans are a pest in factories.
A tube woud be child's play for modern methods,
if the demand was high to warrant the investment for the robots.
But I digress from the handcrafted.....

Once all the time has been spent jigging up to make the tubes, its
REAL easy compared to making complex silicon chips.
Making copies of known designs is easiest, and it explains why
there are so few really new tubes on offer.
The companies want the tubes they make to be retro compatible.

It is easy to reproduce the exact dimensions of the metal and mica,
but to make a KT88, about 300 separate processes are involved.
Before the americans got involved with joint venture with the russians,
the russian industry had some problems, with an easing away from
all the steps required to make a good tube.
David Manley had the EI company in yugo start making KT90
for his amps, but he never tied up Ei in an exclusive contract,
and EI started making for others and selling anyplace,
and even Jadis started using KT90.
Unless you make lots of tubes and sell them, there is little
commercial reward, and to reproduce the 300 steps at home take some doing,
and although each step may be easy, there are many pitfalls along the way
because you have never done an apprenticeship at tube making.
The time one takes to build one single KT88 and get as good as the MOV stuff
would be enormous.

But if you got the cathodes right, and used all metal tubes,
and connected vac pumps, and water cooling,
and used ceramic spacers for the electrode support structure,
maybe you get a decent triode tube which can dissipate 200w,
from which you would get a blameless 60 watts of power.

The 13E1 I use has 2 indirectly heated cathodes within.
The QE208 has three cathodes.
Thus much lower supply voltages can be used, 400v, instead of
1,200v, and the current is higher, voltage is lower, so OPTs
are easier, and Hammond sell some which are cheap,
and which will suit an SE parafeed amp.
So If I made my own output tubes, I would go on from
where the tubes finished up in 1960's, and ignore most
methods used prior to that time, which involved horrible high voltages,
any tiny current flows.
Would I try to make the kind of 300B made by Emmision Labs?
No. They really look so superb though, and at hundreds of $$ each
they would want to be.
To compete with them would be a real challenge.
If YOU try to make a batch of 100 x 300B, it would cost you
far more, even allowing $2 per hr for your work.

Patrick Turner.




Patrick Turner wrote in message ...
arizona cowboy wrote:

yes, it is possible to make tubes, but is it not cheap to make tubes

but if you want them to actually function, you need four things which are
more difficult than the glass blowing part:

1. women capable of doing fine assembly "close work" (men cannot handle
this, almost all tubes worldwide are assembled by females)

2. machinery capable of pulling a relatively hard vacuum

3. some rare materials such as tungsten, thorium and barium

4. technical knowledge (hire a former tube company engineer)

Don't forget the RF heating apparatus to seal the bits of tubes together
whilst a hard vacuum is being pulled, the gettering, etc, etc, etc.


a clean room is not a requirement

Dust or dandruff trapped inside a tube could give off gas.
I'd prefer a fairly clean room.

There is a guy in Japan doing his own tubes in his backyard,
which in japan is usually a very small space, and they look like small
lightbulbs, perhaps with re-cycled parts within,
and they have nicely decorated ceramic bases, very japanezo.

Try google, vacuum , tubes, handmade.

The sound is OK, from what the guy says.

Patrick Turner.




"RainLover" wrote in message
...
Hello,

I'm an artist in Seattle, Washington, USA and me and some artist-type
friends have been talking. . .

A couple of them are glass blowers, and we are wondering if it's
possible to blow the glass portion of the tube, install the
electronics (either from another tube without the glass ) or from
scratch.

Does such a process entail a clean-room or something similar? Do you
think it would be possible?

We just thinking of the possibilities of what a glass blower could do
with the boring clear glass tubes in amplifiers.

Thanks,

James, Seattle

(remove the 'spamblock' to email me)

RainLover wrote:

Hello,

I'm an artist in Seattle, Washington, USA and me and some artist-type
friends have been talking. . .

A couple of them are glass blowers, and we are wondering if it's
possible to blow the glass portion of the tube, install the
electronics (either from another tube without the glass ) or from
scratch.

Does such a process entail a clean-room or something similar? Do you
think it would be possible?

We just thinking of the possibilities of what a glass blower could do
with the boring clear glass tubes in amplifiers.


No clean room required. You could avoid a lot of hassle by using the
electrode assembly and the glass stem from an existing tube. Building
the electrodes is very difficult, needs lots of hard-to-get materials,
some very delicate work, and some unusual techniques like wire spot
welding.

If you used a ready made electrode assembly, the only really hard part
would be replacing the getter. The getter is a mixture of highly reactive
metals which are heated after the vacuum is pumped to absorb the last
traces of gas. Vacuum pumping is fairly easy to do nowadays, a local
college or university physics lab will have all the gear if you can
get access. You're almost certain to find someone there who would be
enthusiastic about such a project. They might even help with the getter.

Your glass blower friends will know about the difficulties of getting a
good glass to metal joint. There is a big difference in the thermal
expansion coefficient between most metals and ordinary soda or lead
glasses. The valve makers use special metal alloys (Invar?) and graded
seals with layers of special glasses to achieve a good seal.


best

Andy Cowley

I used to live in Elmira, NY, where one of the Westinghouse tube
manufacturing plants was located.

A year or two ago, some of the original tooling was available for sale for
about $1000.

For some reason (maybe a reflection of my OCD nature) I've hung onto bad or
weak tubes, perhaps with the remote prospect that they could be of use if
there was a way to rebuild them.

If you don't heat stress the anode metal to oblivion, crack the glass, etc.
would it be practical to rebuild a tube? it would seem like all you might
need would be an ample supply of filament and getter material (instead of
all of the welding & stamping equipment needed to churn out other
components).

I know that big RF transmitting tubes are rebuilt often. Maybe those are
the folks to ask.

It sounds like a big undertaking, in any case . . .


From: Andy Cowley
Organization: University of the West of England, UK
Newsgroups: rec.audio.tubes
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 13:33:29 GMT
Subject: Is it possible to MAKE tubes?

RainLover wrote:

Hello,

I'm an artist in Seattle, Washington, USA and me and some artist-type
friends have been talking. . .

A couple of them are glass blowers, and we are wondering if it's
possible to blow the glass portion of the tube, install the
electronics (either from another tube without the glass ) or from
scratch.

Does such a process entail a clean-room or something similar? Do you
think it would be possible?

We just thinking of the possibilities of what a glass blower could do
with the boring clear glass tubes in amplifiers.


No clean room required. You could avoid a lot of hassle by using the
electrode assembly and the glass stem from an existing tube. Building
the electrodes is very difficult, needs lots of hard-to-get materials,
some very delicate work, and some unusual techniques like wire spot
welding.

If you used a ready made electrode assembly, the only really hard part
would be replacing the getter. The getter is a mixture of highly reactive
metals which are heated after the vacuum is pumped to absorb the last
traces of gas. Vacuum pumping is fairly easy to do nowadays, a local
college or university physics lab will have all the gear if you can
get access. You're almost certain to find someone there who would be
enthusiastic about such a project. They might even help with the getter.

Your glass blower friends will know about the difficulties of getting a
good glass to metal joint. There is a big difference in the thermal
expansion coefficient between most metals and ordinary soda or lead
glasses. The valve makers use special metal alloys (Invar?) and graded
seals with layers of special glasses to achieve a good seal.


best

Andy Cowley

Possible yes, Practicle, Probably not. When I was in high school someone
actually id it as a science project and used the tube as the PA in a small
amp.

"RainLover" wrote in message
...
Hello,

I'm an artist in Seattle, Washington, USA and me and some artist-type
friends have been talking. . .

A couple of them are glass blowers, and we are wondering if it's
possible to blow the glass portion of the tube, install the
electronics (either from another tube without the glass ) or from
scratch.

Does such a process entail a clean-room or something similar? Do you
think it would be possible?

We just thinking of the possibilities of what a glass blower could do
with the boring clear glass tubes in amplifiers.

Thanks,

James, Seattle

(remove the 'spamblock' to email me)

Hi James,

Here's a guy whos done it. http://home.earthlink.net/~lenyr/hm-triode.htm

Don't know how well it works. He also has a vacuum diode on his site.

Regards,

Raymond


RainLover wrote:

Hello,

I'm an artist in Seattle, Washington, USA and me and some artist-type
friends have been talking. . .

A couple of them are glass blowers, and we are wondering if it's
possible to blow the glass portion of the tube, install the
electronics (either from another tube without the glass ) or from
scratch.

Does such a process entail a clean-room or something similar? Do you
think it would be possible?

We just thinking of the possibilities of what a glass blower could do
with the boring clear glass tubes in amplifiers.

Thanks,

James, Seattle

(remove the 'spamblock' to email me)

Dear James

to see some of the steps involved, check out

http://www.retrovox.com.au/amv1052.html

David

There are also some great photos at http://www.kraudio.com/ showing a
"modern" production line.

Raymond

David Crittle wrote:

Dear James

to see some of the steps involved, check out

http://www.retrovox.com.au/amv1052.html

David

On Wed, 17 Dec 2003 06:01:43 -0800, Jon Yaeger wrote:

I used to live in Elmira, NY, where one of the Westinghouse tube
manufacturing plants was located.

A year or two ago, some of the original tooling was available for sale for
about $1000.

For some reason (maybe a reflection of my OCD nature) I've hung onto bad
or weak tubes, perhaps with the remote prospect that they could be of use
if there was a way to rebuild them.

snip

Many, many years ago you could get "valves" (showing my lack of US
nationality there!) rebuilt. You could usually pick them out because of a
circular patch of clear glass on the envelope where it had been cut away for
access. I doubt very much if you could get anyone to do this now though.