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Attention Heath TT-1 Tube Tester owners

J

Jim Adney

Jan 1, 1970
0
I recently got out my trusty Heathkit TT-1 tube tester to check a
bunch of tubes that had accumulated here. I've stopped using its roll
chart, because it's starting to show its age, and I assume the roll
chart is not replacable. If it IS, I'd love to hear about it.

In the meantime, I have a tube settings booklet from Heath dated 1976,
which I suspect is their latest version. If anyone has a later version
let me know. Mine is getting a bit shopworn, so I'm thinking about
scanning it and getting copies made. In the process of doing that, I
could also add in any extra tubes that Heath added in some supplements
that I also have.

I can get very nice reproductions made and I was wondering how many
people out there would like copies.

The original booklets came with the plastic "spine" bindings, but I
was thinking that printing on 11 x 17 paper and then center stapling
and folding would be a better way to go, since the holes for the
spines tend to tear and the spines themselves get crushed.

So, any opinions sent now would be appreciated.

thanks,

-
 
N

nesesu

Jan 1, 1970
0
this does bring up an interesting thought, not totally unrelated - with
today's inexpensive computer interfaces, why not build/market a tube tester
accessory that would plug into a USB bus - all you would need is one of each
kind of socket on the unit, and a couple of power sources (filament and
plate/bias voltages) - so a set of SCRs to choose filament voltage and apply
it to the proper pins, 4 or four cheap D/As to create the voltages (maybe
with an HV op amp to create higher voltages), and op amps and A/D with a mux
to scan voltages and currents on all the pins of every socket - this would
probably take no more than 50 to 100 parts and a small PC board and you
could have the tube info read from a computer database and have the test
results displayed graphically - transconductance plots, leakage, emissivity,
all those esoteric parameters.

Done as a labor of love, where the NRE is not amortized, it could be
profitable at the $150 to $300 price range - wouldn't this be a good thing?
it would take less space, be more accurate, faster and less error prone than
using a 40 to 60 year old largely mechanical device.

so, who's gonna make it?

Hunh, it should be so simple!
I suppose a wide range switching supply for the filaments would work,
but it needs to be able to supply between 1V@50mA and 120V@100mA as
well as up to 3-4A at around 6V. Likewise you would need 3 variable
DC supplies for plate, screen and grid bias as well a source of AC
signal for the gm measurements. Also some form of 'free-point'
switching to connect the various sources and measure inputs to the
socket pins [at up to 4A and 500V]. Then you need the detectors as you
say. Methinks the parts cost would be a bit above your estimate. Then
the program to run all that stuff and display the results and,
finally, creating the tube test data tables. Sounds like a couple of
man years work.

I am in the process of adapting a Heath IT-3121 output to test tubes,
and that simply needs a bias amplifier to drive the control grid, an
external supply for the screen and a filament supply. It looks like
the IT-3121, an IP-17 and a socket box will do the job along with the
bias amp. That's only about a week's work.

Neil S.
 
K

Kim Herron

Jan 1, 1970
0
Already done Bill, but it's not that cheap. Conversions of Hickok's
cardmatic are available and a computer drives that setup section of the
tester. All the tubes are in the system. I don't remember who is doing
that, but you need to supply the tester. Oh and the $1600 bucks.
 
J

Jim Adney

Jan 1, 1970
0
Already done Bill, but it's not that cheap. Conversions of Hickok's
cardmatic are available and a computer drives that setup section of the
tester. All the tubes are in the system. I don't remember who is doing
that, but you need to supply the tester. Oh and the $1600 bucks.

I was thinking that I'd seen it at SND Tube Sales, but looking right
now, I don't see it.

-
 
J

John Robertson

Jan 1, 1970
0
Jim said:
I recently got out my trusty Heathkit TT-1 tube tester to check a
bunch of tubes that had accumulated here. I've stopped using its roll
chart, because it's starting to show its age, and I assume the roll
chart is not replacable. If it IS, I'd love to hear about it.

Jim, if you live in a medium sized city chances are you have a company
that copies architectural drawings. These guys have continuous feed
photocopiers that will copy almost ANY length of paper! Not saying it
will be cheap though, but perhaps if you provide the roll of paper it
might go easier on you? Here in Vancouver a company called TR Trades has
a few of these machines going all day long and they ar every handy for
making long copies of my schematics, plus they can reduce or scan them
as well. However they are in business and do not do this for free.

I have heard that these endless length copiers turn up on eBay from time
to time, perhaps someone here has one?

John :-#)#

--
(Please post followups or tech inquiries to the newsgroup)
John's Jukes Ltd. 2343 Main St., Vancouver, BC, Canada V5T 3C9
Call (604)872-5757 or Fax 872-2010 (Pinballs, Jukes, Video Games)
www.flippers.com
"Old pinballers never die, they just flip out."
 
J

Jim Adney

Jan 1, 1970
0
Jim, if you live in a medium sized city chances are you have a company
that copies architectural drawings. These guys have continuous feed
photocopiers that will copy almost ANY length of paper!

Interesting thought. I didn't know that such things existed. I can ask
around. It's likely that if I had more than one made at the same time,
each one might be cheaper.

-
 
P

Peter Wieck

Jan 1, 1970
0
Interesting thought. I didn't know that such things existed. I can ask
around. It's likely that if I had more than one made at the same time,
each one might be cheaper.

Yep. They do. The only downside is that you are stuck with whatever
default width the machine takes. We keep one in the office that is set
for 42" as the standard width. Lots of waste for small drawings. It is
"scanner-to-plotter" HP technology and so does color (very nicely) as
well. NOT CHEAP. It also operates (with different dyes and/or inks) on
vinyl, finished fabrics, sticky-back or slick paper - even more
expensive.

On the other hand, as the entire system is computerized, we often will
print-in-parallel so as not to waste paper. We can scan one 18" banner
into the system and print two out on the 42" stock with good margins.
If you are using 8.5 x whatever originals, you could print four rows
in parallel. All this can be set up after the initial scan and before
the *expensive* "PRINT" button is hit. 11 x 17 fold-outs can also be
accomodated in the initial set-up without (much) waste.

As William notes below, the length that can be plotted/printed is
limited only by the length of the printer-stock roll.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA
 
J

Jim Adney

Jan 1, 1970
0
Yep. They do. The only downside is that you are stuck with whatever
default width the machine takes.

Hmmm, we have a 36" roll-fed plotter. I wonder if I could reformat all
this into the right width and then print out 4 (or whatever) of them
at a time. To do this right, I think I'd have to pull all this data
into a spread sheet first, so I could format the info into the right
usable shape.

The interesting part would be to design a cutter to cut them into
strips as they come out of the plotter....

It's still worth checking at our local print shop to see what they can
do.

-
 
J

John Goller, k9uwa

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hmmm, we have a 36" roll-fed plotter. I wonder if I could reformat all
this into the right width and then print out 4 (or whatever) of them
at a time. To do this right, I think I'd have to pull all this data
into a spread sheet first, so I could format the info into the right
usable shape.

The interesting part would be to design a cutter to cut them into
strips as they come out of the plotter....

It's still worth checking at our local print shop to see what they can
do.

The Full Adobe Acrobat program will Scan an existing Roll Chart from a tube
tester. Only problem with it would be page ends margins and such that you
wouldn't want margins at the end of each sheet to make new roll charts up.
Could be an interesting project.

John k9uwa
 
J

JosephKK

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hmmm, we have a 36" roll-fed plotter. I wonder if I could reformat all
this into the right width and then print out 4 (or whatever) of them
at a time. To do this right, I think I'd have to pull all this data
into a spread sheet first, so I could format the info into the right
usable shape.

The interesting part would be to design a cutter to cut them into
strips as they come out of the plotter....

It's still worth checking at our local print shop to see what they can
do.

-

Many such printers / plotters include cutters for separating the
output of different prints / plots.
 
E

Engineer

Jan 1, 1970
0
(snip)

Interesting thread... I use a Heathkitt TC-2 quite a lot - the chart
is in good shape (still !), but I'm not convinced that rolling it up
and down is the best way to get to specific tube set-up data (of
course, it's always to hand... er, thumb !) For odd-balls, you have
to go to the supplementary sheets anyway. It's cheaper to copy it
sequentially onto separate 8 1/2 x 11 sheets (two sided, one or two
columns, use a paper mask on the "other" column as you don't want it
on the same page), spiral bind them and keep them with the tester.
I've done this for the Heathkit tube supplementary sheets (and for
most downloaded manuals.) Then simply scan down to the tube you want
by eye. Easy to add extras, too.
I don't say scrap the roller chart - put it back carefully for
posterity (repaired as needed) and keep it there, but not used much.
Cheers,
Roger
 
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