Video of a guy who makes his own vacuum tubes

Posted by Mark Frauenfelder, September 18, 2008 5:24 PM | permalink

Over at the Make blog, Gareth Branwyn posted this terrific video of a guy who makes his own vacuum tubes. Make your own vacuum tubes

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Discussion

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#1 posted by w000t , September 18, 2008 5:45 PM

Mentioned on BBG in January, but worth posting for those who missed it there. Not only is the process fascinating, the lack of voiceover and choice of music make it unexpectedly hypnotic to watch. A great video on several levels.

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#2 posted by PaulRedeker , September 18, 2008 5:46 PM

This is a useful skill to learn.

After the zombie hordes destroyed much of our civilization, the only way to get microchips and transistors was to recycle pre-collapse hardware.
While plentiful, large batches of identcal parts were in limited supply and standardization was difficult.

For a good five years, we rebuilt our IT on vacuum tubes.

Tubes rock.

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#3 posted by artfreakydude , September 18, 2008 6:05 PM

loved it

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#4 posted by eclectro , September 18, 2008 6:22 PM

@2. Actually I question the hypothesis of your minifiction. Most if not all logic circuits can be built from circuits that use *any* transistor as amplification capabilities are not needed, just small signal switching.

And contrary to what it may seem, it may be easier to fabricate simple transistors over vacuum tubes.

There is a book on cutting your own tubes;
http://www.lindsaybks.com/bks7/finstr/index.html

If anyone knows the title (I'd like to find it), there was a book written in the nineties covering the same subject. Also, there is strong anecdotal evidence of poor WWII hams using test tubes to make radios.

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#5 posted by Anonymous , September 18, 2008 6:24 PM

What a hero. The world needs more artisans like this.

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#6 posted by ployntabs , September 18, 2008 6:44 PM

Sweet Mother of God, what is all that stuff? Does anyone read French? I got the gist of most of the gear except the paint bucket thing that he put the glass in to temper?!
I very much admire people like this. People who can fabricate anything. I've used tube powered guitar and audio amps for forty years. I've never seen them made.

Cool

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#7 posted by js7a , September 18, 2008 7:40 PM

If you can make your own tubes, you can loosen the electrodes making them more susceptible to mechanical vibrations and thus more interesting as a music amplifier. The reason tube amps are so prized is that they have a distinctive distortion sound when they are placed near a speaker sounding their output, and the sound vibrations in turn move the electrodes and change their amplification characteristics. I wonder how well that unique sound has been modeled digitally yet.

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#8 posted by themindfantastic , September 18, 2008 7:56 PM

Honestly this was literally the definition of beautiful... its watching an artist at work.

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#9 posted by Giovanni

, September 18, 2008 8:05 PM

ooo, wouldn't it be cool to have a big steampunk style calculator built using vacuum tubes?

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#10 posted by Marble River , September 18, 2008 8:13 PM

That doesn't look too hard; I think I'll give it a try this weekend...

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#11 posted by Duffong , September 18, 2008 8:18 PM

@1 Hypnotic might be just the right term. Brilliant combination of artisan qualities with a thick layer of wry engineering skill.

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#12 posted by schickm , September 18, 2008 8:33 PM

wow, I was transfixed for the entire 17 minutes.

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#13 posted by Steve Stair , September 18, 2008 8:49 PM

I wonder how long PaulRedeker is going to keep the gag going?

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#14 posted by ST , September 18, 2008 8:54 PM

That was mesmerizing.

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#15 posted by JIMWICh

, September 18, 2008 10:35 PM

Watching this filled me with joy and admiration.

Thanks for that, Gar and Mark!

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#16 posted by Dirac , September 19, 2008 12:22 AM

Umm, guys? You already posted this 9 months ago :)
Not that I mind, it is a great video.

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/01/07/video-making-a-vacuu.html
See my comment on that occasion, found some background info on the creator.

Boingbing: The new Slashdot?

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#17 posted by Anonymous , September 19, 2008 12:51 AM

i'd kill for a supply of matched sets of 6386's for my fairchild 670 right about now....

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#18 posted by Jerril , September 19, 2008 7:49 AM

#16, you're late to the party. #1 already mentioned that Gadgets posted something about this already.

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#19 posted by Roy Trumbull , September 19, 2008 11:46 AM

Having graduated from college to make the world safe for vacuum tubes, this video was a delight. In the receiving tube game RCA, Sylvania, GE, and others held solid market shares. CBS got into the game with their Hytron tubes. I think they were the first to exit. One company I worked for had drawers filled with Hytron tubes. Another employee waved me off using them. The 6AU6, a common receiving tube, out of the Hytron box had a lower transconductance than an RCA tube that had been cooking 24 hrs a day for three years.
I believe the glass lathes used to make the envelopes were made by a company owned by the Litton family who kept it apart from Litton Industries. When tubes wound down they were prepared to shut down. Then along came fiber optics.

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#20 posted by Anonymous , September 19, 2008 12:28 PM

This man is a god.

It's looks like he made every piece of equipment he uses.

Just fantastic, I wish I had that much patience.

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#21 posted by trr , September 19, 2008 12:33 PM

Jerril,
But dupes of comments about posting dupe stories aren't as bad as the dupes they're reporting, right?

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#22 posted by Anonymous , September 19, 2008 11:19 PM

I loved it! I wish there was a class to learn this old art of tube making... I would make my own KT88 and so many more.

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