Great vintage film on the construction of Tek CRTs

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David D Speck MD
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Great vintage film on the construction of Tek CRTs

Post by David D Speck MD »

This film should bring a tear to the eye and a lump to the throat of
anyone who likes vintage equipment. It even has some high vacuum stuff in it!

Enjoy!

http://classictek.org/index.php?option= ... tlink&id=1

Dave
RobertTubbs
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Re: Great vintage film on the construction of Tek CRTs

Post by RobertTubbs »

Thanks for sharing this with us.

This really is beautiful, I've got some real oldies from this era including some all tube O'scopes.

Cool to see how they made em back then, totally by hand.

Again, beautiful and thank you.

Robert Tubbs
Jerry Biehler
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Re: Great vintage film on the construction of Tek CRTs

Post by Jerry Biehler »

Nice. Tektronix is within walking distance of my house. Too bad they dont make much any more.

The founders of Tek strongly encouraged employees to go out and start their own companies. Planar, Maxim, and a whole lot of other got thier start from Tek.
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Steven Sesselmann
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Re: Great vintage film on the construction of Tek CRTs

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

David,

Thanks for posting,...Richard is just going to love this movie

Steven
http://www.gammaspectacular.com - Gamma Spectrometry Systems
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Steven_Sesselmann - Various papers and patents on RG
Frank Sanns
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Re: Great vintage film on the construction of Tek CRTs

Post by Frank Sanns »

Over the years I think I have done just about everything shown in the video (yes, including the slide rule too). Not always with great proficiency but done none the less. Each step in that process is not particularly difficult but requires great dillegence and care. To do ALL of those steps in sequence to get the final CRT multipies the chance of a defect by a huge factor. The off spec rate for those tubes had to balance on the edge of disaster on every day of production.

Still, without gloves, a clean room, or any high tech equipment, they put it all together to make the finest scopes.

There were also a few proceedures that would never fly today. I particularly like the dumping of the Chromic and HF acids right down the drain. The key was to keep a high flow of water always running to dilute down the bad stuff and to keep the pH of waste water handling facilities from swinging wildly towards a pH of 1.

Nice find.

Frank Sanns
Achiever's madness; when enough is still not enough. ---FS
We have to stop looking at the world through our physical eyes. The universe is NOT what we see. It is the quantum world that is real. The rest is just an electron illusion. ---FS
Jerry Biehler
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Re: Great vintage film on the construction of Tek CRTs

Post by Jerry Biehler »

Yeah, there are a few things in that video that are definitely no-no's. The second video where they show the production of ceramic tubes is better, cleanrooms and the like. But the show the guy dumping the ceramic powder with no dust mask. Ewww...

http://classictek.org/index.php?option= ... tlink&id=2

I sent the first link to a friend of mine who used to work down there. He started probably 5-6 years after that first video. He said all these movies were in house training videos.
richnormand
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Re: Great vintage film on the construction of Tek CRTs

Post by richnormand »

Thanks for posting this link. Watched the video with my old 545A in my line of sight. Looks like the CRTs were of that vintage and now I know why it still works perfectly. I have several other Tek, including a storage scope and a transient digitizer, but the 545 is what I use for any high voltage troubleshooting on flybacks or fusor type supplies, as the tube inputs are virtually indestructible compared to semiconductors..
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Doug Coulter
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Re: Great vintage film on the construction of Tek CRTs

Post by Doug Coulter »

Well, no-no's aside, if we were to build our fusors to this level of precision -- I bet we get better results, or at least, the closer I get, the better mine gets. Charged particles is charged particles, given scaling for E/M the rules are the same.

What's nice is most of this is available to us -- what was *really* hard then is not so hard now.

I think one of the main takeaways from this is *jigs* and *tools* which might be why "Toolmaker" is something any machinist is proud to be called. The more I do, the more I learn the importance of this.
When I was even more ignorant than now, I thought jigs were only for high production levels. Nope, sometimes it's the only way to accuracy even if only making one of something. Seems weird to spend so much time "getting ready" compared to "doing the job" but it really pays off -- even more than in painting or welding which are all about "getting ready".

I used and still do some big 'ol tube type scopes, some of which I may sell on the trading post here to give you guys a first crack before they go to ebay. But I have also had a more modern scope survive bad treatment. I had a 465 take a hit direct from 50kv -- whacked the probe, but the scope lived, and that one is all solid state....Tek knew their stuff.

Tip for momentary clean air in a not-clean room. Spray a water mist all around and it settles all the dust and dander for long enough if you work real fast....
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
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