Hi Quite literally 10’s of millions of dollars (back in the good old days) was put into the idea of a rebuildable Cs tube or rebuilding ones that already exist. The result was more people in the tube business for a while. They never did come up with a rebuildable tube or a salvage process. Since the “prize” was a few hundred million (US government refurbishments over years and years) if it worked, economics was not the issue.
Bob > On Nov 1, 2016, at 6:51 AM, Attila Kinali <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Mon, 31 Oct 2016 14:50:51 -0700 > ed breya <[email protected]> wrote: > >> It's a shame that they're not built in such a way that just the wear-out >> parts could be replaced, and not wasting all the rest of the design and >> craftsmanship that's probably just fine. > > Because it's not that easy. We are talking about a high vacuum system > here. While you can get a vacuum tube working with a simple rotary > pump. You can even have something like an ion pump to make the vacuum > a bit cleaner and make it perform better. But this will not work with > the level of vacuum you need for a Cs standard. A small finger print > left somewhere on something, will outgas for many months and make > the whole system perform an order of magnitude or two worse than speced. > > Yes, Cs beam standards are not as finicky as the modern Cs fountains > or even worse the optical clocks, but they are still very sensitive. > > It would be possible to make the tube such that you could change the > "consumables". But it would still take a skilled technician in a clean > lab with special equipment to do the maintenance. But I am not sure > whether it would be that much cheaper than a new tube. And you always > have the risk that something goes wrong and you have the scrap the > tube for good. > > > Attila Kinali > -- > It is upon moral qualities that a society is ultimately founded. All > the prosperity and technological sophistication in the world is of no > use without that foundation. > -- Miss Matheson, The Diamond Age, Neil Stephenson > _______________________________________________ > time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] > To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts > and follow the instructions there. _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
