Thanks for all the comments, sorry I could not reply sooner. I have added mercury to glow tubes in the past but I have not wanted to contaminate my new pump.
I could do it on my old pump but it is not able to pump below 1 torr and the tube would be left with impurities. My electrodes consist of copper welded to tungsten with a nickel buffer and then the tungsten welded to nickel wire that forms the digits inside the tube. The tungsten forms the actual seal to the pyrex glass and the copper provides a nice external lead. I heat up the tube with the torch while pumping for about a minute and let it pump under high(ish) vacuum (5-10 microns) for 30 min. I then open the bleed valve and adjust the pressure until the glow looks good and seal it off. I also have made Triodes in the past and those require about 15 min heating with the torch on the pump along with an hour of pumping. On Wednesday, October 20, 2021 at 12:49:28 PM UTC-7 nickja...@gmail.com wrote: > I don't recall for certain if it was NeonJohn or another guy, or even what > group it was in. Could've been the old geigercounterenthusiasts group on > yahoo. This was some time ago, when we were laughing about the insane > overreaction to breakage of CFLs in school classrooms. I've never tried > opening a tube in a controlled fashion myself, but have seen tiny droplets > in broken ones, usually near the ends of the tube. > > Been playing with glass laser tubes a little the last week. Found that > Gammex patient positioners used both red and green HeNe before diodes took > over. Got one that won't lase though the plasma tube is a nice bright > pink. It hisses or buzzes continuously but no beam output. The PS is good > as it lit up a couple of similar size d tubes last night when I tried. I > need to completely remove it and try sighting through the bore. It's > possible it's leaking and coming up in pressure slowly and is now dead. I > was looking at the metal evac/fill tube where it's crimped off and > wondering about the possibilities of re-gassing... I have a couple of > those metal tube ends with some defunct old tubes I got from Laser Sam a > couple years back for experimenting. More interests, less time... > > On Wed, Oct 20, 2021 at 2:37 PM Mac Doktor <themac...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> >> On Oct 20, 2021, at 2:59 PM, Nick Andrews <nickja...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> A guy built a device to try and capture the mercury, thinking he could >> recover and build up a small supply. He found that he never could get any >> significant quantity from the tubes. >> >> >> Did he condense the vapor first? >> >> >> Terry Bowman, KA4HJH >> "The Mac Doctor" >> >> https://www.astarcloseup.com >> >> “...the book said something astonishing, a very big thought. The stars, >> it said, were suns but very far away. The Sun was a star but close >> up.”—Carl Sagan, "The Backbone Of Night", *Cosmos*, 1980 >> >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "neonixie-l" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to neonixie-l+...@googlegroups.com. >> > To view this discussion on the web, visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/4D0670A0-1C14-4185-8491-4629E387CD7C%40gmail.com >> >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/4D0670A0-1C14-4185-8491-4629E387CD7C%40gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >> . >> > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/17081a57-50be-4398-85ba-fc7572f0e209n%40googlegroups.com.
