Website dedicated to making your own vacuum tubes

[redhat]

I found this  tonight (this morning) while looking for something else.  Looks neat, lots of practical info.  Unfortunately, no direct info or plans for the tubes themselves, just the fixtures and equipment required.

http://www.tubecrafter.com/index.html

+-RH

[ThElectriCat]

This Is a fantastic website. Rons YouTube channel is also quite fascinating.
Claude Paillard, F2F0 also has a fantastic video of himself manufacturing vacuum tubes. He even made his own vacuum equipment
http://paillard.claude.free.fr/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzyXMEpq4qw

I don't speak french, but the google translate for his website is good enough if you already have a basic understanding of machine shop and glassblowing practice.

[radiogaga]

^^^ This is awesome. ^^^

[Pigmeat]

I live near a couple of art glass studios/factories due to the local sandstone being nearly pure silica. They could crank the tube shapes out in no time, but it would cost much more than they were worth to have them blown there for a hobby project.

Wrap an old light bulb w/ wire and call it a day.

[ThElectriCat]

I certainly don't think its worth it in an economic sense. Acquiring the needed equipment for glass blowing, vacuum, spot welding, and and all the materials required is insanely expensive even if you make almost everything yourself. I just the satisfaction of building a radio truly from scratch might be worth it to some people. Anyway its certainly cheaper than acquiring a contact aligner, vacuum system, bakeout kiln, spin coaters, mask stepper, and the tools required to make a set of chrome on silica masks required to make ones own planar transistors, not to mention the heinously expensive chemicals to prep wafers. (I can dream though)

[redhat]

I will be faced with that fact that I will someday no longer be able to get tubes for my transmitters and radios.  At some point, I will have to build my own.  and when not being used for tubes, I can make neon

+-RH

[Boriken]

Not nearly as high tech but homemade diodes, fet's & triodes.

http://www.sparkbangbuzz.com

[Josh]

Lol, who else had one of those 200 in 1 radio shack electronics labs?
http://sparkbangbuzz.com/cds-fet/cds-fet.htm

This is the tech we gave up for what we have today;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDvF89Bh27Y

[ThElectriCat]

I don't remember which ones exactly, but there some videos of Jeri Ellsworth making MOSFETs from wafer scraps floating around the internet somewhere. She has more setup than most hobby electronics labs, but not anything that is unobtainable.

Really. making ones own transistors is doable. Making ones own RF power or low noise transistors may however be a different story.

[Davep]

That's the thing - there's so much expensive equipment involved, and who knows what the learning curve comes to.But it really doesn't have to look like a manufactured tube or be pretty.
Thanks for the link Boriken. Very interesting stuff.  I have tried the auto taillight before unsuccessfully . You can pull a hard vacuum with running water( venturi) , I learned this employed in an analytical lab. I have no idea how low it will pull on the micron thing, never had a gauge, but it's enough to make a crucible difficult to pull out from the flask. I guess it's not enough since that hack isn't mentioned.  Also I never found anything sufficient to hold an evacuation airway tight enough to maintain a vac without melting the glass, but never tried hot glue.  I just wanted to use one successfully as a diode in a crystal set , didn't matter how well , just if it worked at all. Like the early guys did.
I had given up,great to read someone else did it. I only have limited time for esoteric projects that are just for fun like everyone else , but I love the chase.
Thanks for the links everyone and good luck Redhat

[ThElectriCat]

Here is A link to the only video (or even modern documentation) i know of of someone building a sprengel pump.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viJ3T-1KZqY
This is about the simplest vacuum pump you can build that will go low enough to allow thermionic electron emission without arcing over at too low of a voltage. Also. any vapor remaining tends to be mercury vapor. which is sometimes beneficial.
I have never heard of someone pulling a good enough vacuum with only a mechanical pump or aspirator, only with a diffusion, turbo, or other forepump. To my knowlegde this is the only single stage device that works well enough

[redhat]

Making a pilotron, an early vacuum tube.

https://youtu.be/mx3IOlzMKp4

+-RH