[Milsurplus] Making Tubes

[J Forster]

When Raytheon had a retail surplus outlet they sold off the remaining
tube making machines from the Quincy, MA plant. This was in the late
'90s as I remember.

There were a lot of things that looked pretty much like the machines
used to make and fill Coke bottles...  sort of large circular production
lines with gas burners and induction heaters.  No computers, just gears,
chains, relays, air cylinders, etc. Clearly '30s or '40s vintage stuff.

There were also special winding machines, like coil winders, that made
the grid structures. The tubes were hand assembled on manual production
lines in a clean room. Once the parts were inserted between two mica
disks with wire holes, the electrical and mechanical connections were
made by capacitive discharge welding. The filament-grids-plate assembly
was then welded to a pre made wire feed through and seal assembly, then
baked out, tipped off, and the getter flashed.

Somewhere, I have a DVD of a film made by the MIT Industrial Liaison
Office of the process and plant in operation. If there is enough
interest, I might look into making it available on the web.

-John



  Hi

  If you look at the pictures they, they used a lot of rooms full of
  people busy tweaking wires. It was pretty labor intensive. At least
  in Russia it still is ...

  Bob