Vic Smith wrote in
news
So they haven't got it figured out yet.


You guys cutting bulbs apart reminded me of.......

http://www.ee.vill.edu/~cdanjo/images/e41000.gif

I used to know a broadcast engineer whos transmitter used 4-1000A
tetrode tubes. When the tubes got tired, after a few tens of thousands
of hours, he would very carefully turn them upside down in a foam tube
carton, cut the glass evacuation tube in the center of the tube base to
release the vacuum without destroying the tube or its elements inside.

Then, he would use a tiny tube and pump the tube about 90% full of
water, enough to completely cover the main tube parts inside. Into the
water, he would very carefully insert a tiny branch of that green
fishtank weed we used to buy for the goldfish at Woolworth's. He would
then sit the tube, pins up in the sun by his desk window for a couple of
weeks to let the weed get a headstart. These weeds grow very quickly in
sunshine, enriching the water with lots of oxygen. As the weed got a
good headstart, he would use an eyedropper and drop about 10-12 guppy
fry, just hatched, so small you could hardly see them being almost
transparent.

Then he would seal up the glass tube with RTV so you couldn't see it
buried in the base like it was. After the RTV set, he'd mount the tube
on a nice wooden base with whoever's name this wonderful gift was for
and set it back in the sun until the fish, eating the plant, grew up to
adult guppies to have children of their own. Adult guppies could not
fit in between the tube elements up inside the plate so the guts of the
tube provided an excellent place for the new fry to hide so the adults
couldn't eat them. Guppies are worse than rabbits, hundreds of them!

Eventually the tube ecosystem would come into balance to a point where
the guppies produced but not eaten could keep up with the green weed
trying to fill the biosphere....er, ah, biotube....he had created. He
gave me one in about 1972 and it lived, totally untended, in my window
on an end table in the sun until 1987, when the system suddenly
collapsed for no apparent reason. Everything died in the tube. We
never figured out why, but suspected the metals corroding from the
plates and grid wires had contaminated the water too much.

It was one of the finest gifts anyone had ever given me. We lost Bill
in 1994. He died of a heart attack sitting at his beloved engineer's
console of the television station he had helped create. He is sorely
missed by all who knew him, probably the gentlest, most patient man I
ever met.....

.....I wonder if any tubes are still "living" today??

Vic Smith wrote:
On Fri, 26 Dec 2008 13:26:03 -0600, "KLC Lewis"
wrote:

"Vic Smith" wrote in message
...

You just use a chain saw on light bulbs.
Nobody cares about how they come out.

--Vic

It's difficult to argue against such flawless logic. lol

I'm just a simple tool guy. Don't need that logic stuff.
You know, I spent some time searching for the right tool for the
nautilus job, and came up with squat.
Maybe I came to the end of the internets. Not the first time I was
foiled.
A thin high

I have a diamond blade for my bandsaw, it'll cut just about anything on
the planet. Kerf is about 0.050", you run it at about 4000fpm, yes
that's 4000. Pricey though, first you have to have the bandsaw, then
the blade. Blade goes for about 800 bucks,,, but it does last a long time.

Cheers
Martin

On Fri, 26 Dec 2008 22:04:34 +0000, Larry wrote:

Vic Smith wrote in
news
So they haven't got it figured out yet.


You guys cutting bulbs apart reminded me of.......

http://www.ee.vill.edu/~cdanjo/images/e41000.gif

I used to know a broadcast engineer whos transmitter used 4-1000A
tetrode tubes. When the tubes got tired, after a few tens of thousands
of hours, he would very carefully turn them upside down in a foam tube
carton, cut the glass evacuation tube in the center of the tube base to
release the vacuum without destroying the tube or its elements inside.

Then, he would use a tiny tube and pump the tube about 90% full of
water, enough to completely cover the main tube parts inside. Into the
water, he would very carefully insert a tiny branch of that green
fishtank weed we used to buy for the goldfish at Woolworth's. He would
then sit the tube, pins up in the sun by his desk window for a couple of
weeks to let the weed get a headstart. These weeds grow very quickly in
sunshine, enriching the water with lots of oxygen. As the weed got a
good headstart, he would use an eyedropper and drop about 10-12 guppy
fry, just hatched, so small you could hardly see them being almost
transparent.

Then he would seal up the glass tube with RTV so you couldn't see it
buried in the base like it was. After the RTV set, he'd mount the tube
on a nice wooden base with whoever's name this wonderful gift was for
and set it back in the sun until the fish, eating the plant, grew up to
adult guppies to have children of their own. Adult guppies could not
fit in between the tube elements up inside the plate so the guts of the
tube provided an excellent place for the new fry to hide so the adults
couldn't eat them. Guppies are worse than rabbits, hundreds of them!

Eventually the tube ecosystem would come into balance to a point where
the guppies produced but not eaten could keep up with the green weed
trying to fill the biosphere....er, ah, biotube....he had created. He
gave me one in about 1972 and it lived, totally untended, in my window
on an end table in the sun until 1987, when the system suddenly
collapsed for no apparent reason. Everything died in the tube. We
never figured out why, but suspected the metals corroding from the
plates and grid wires had contaminated the water too much.

It was one of the finest gifts anyone had ever given me. We lost Bill
in 1994. He died of a heart attack sitting at his beloved engineer's
console of the television station he had helped create. He is sorely
missed by all who knew him, probably the gentlest, most patient man I
ever met.....

....I wonder if any tubes are still "living" today??

Wow. Were the fish still reproducing after 15 years?
That's amazing. Never heard anything like that.
Seems like it would be commercialized.
Do away with the hundreds of bucks I spent on filters, aerators, etc
- bigger tanks of course.
How much water did the tubes contain?
Why no algae growth on the glass? I used plecostomuses to keep the
glass clear. The plec in my 55 gallon was about 16" when we moved.
Gave him to the pet store. Drew quite a crowd when I brought it in.

--Vic

On Fri, 26 Dec 2008 17:18:39 -0500, Marty wrote:

Vic Smith wrote:
On Fri, 26 Dec 2008 13:26:03 -0600, "KLC Lewis"
wrote:

"Vic Smith" wrote in message
...

You just use a chain saw on light bulbs.
Nobody cares about how they come out.

--Vic

It's difficult to argue against such flawless logic. lol

I'm just a simple tool guy. Don't need that logic stuff.
You know, I spent some time searching for the right tool for the
nautilus job, and came up with squat.
Maybe I came to the end of the internets. Not the first time I was
foiled.
A thin high

I have a diamond blade for my bandsaw, it'll cut just about anything on
the planet. Kerf is about 0.050", you run it at about 4000fpm, yes
that's 4000. Pricey though, first you have to have the bandsaw, then
the blade. Blade goes for about 800 bucks,,, but it does last a long time.

That'll work. (-:

--Vic

Richard Casady wrote:
On Thu, 04 Dec 2008 12:45:30 -0600, Vic Smith
wrote:

On Thu, 04 Dec 2008 11:58:18 -0600, Brian Whatcott
wrote:


It's true: diamond grit Sawzall blades and diamond edge round blades
are not THAT high, anymore, but I would rather start with a thin
abrasive cut off saw round blade to start with. How many Nautilus
shells will he chop up anyway?

Brian W
I'd just try a fine tooth hacksaw first.
Might do fine on that shell.

Be almost like cutting a light bulb.

Casady


Find a lapidary club and someone there will be able to cut it with a
diamond saw. The saws the faceters use have a very thin kerf, but the
diameter may be too small.
Rockhounds use diamond blades up to 36" to cut things like petrified
logs. For bigger things, they use a mud saw.
Gordon

Vic Smith wrote in
:

Wow. Were the fish still reproducing after 15 years?
That's amazing. Never heard anything like that.
Seems like it would be commercialized.
Do away with the hundreds of bucks I spent on filters, aerators, etc
- bigger tanks of course.
How much water did the tubes contain?
Why no algae growth on the glass? I used plecostomuses to keep the
glass clear. The plec in my 55 gallon was about 16" when we moved.
Gave him to the pet store. Drew quite a crowd when I brought it in.



Yes, the reproduced right up to the end. So did the plants! It was a
self-contained, solar powered ecosystem. You can do it with a bottle,
but it's not as impressive, of course.

I don't think commercialization would work. You MUST provide LIGHT or
it dies, just like the Earth. You can't just turn it on and off taking
it out of a box so it wouldn't sell. The tube is about 7" in diameter,
10" high, something like that. As it was a closed, sealed environment,
no outside spores, like algae, can get inside. The balance of CO2 for
the plant to eat and O2 for the fish to breathe keeps the equilibrium.
Your algae come in the water and in the air, just like a swimming pool.
The air is full of spores. You were blowing spores into the water to
add oxygen to it. All the O2 in the tube came from the weeds.

I may have misspoke about sunlight. You couldn't sit it in the sunlight
or it would overheat, not good. There was no thermometer in it,
wouldn't fit through the evacuation tube, so your temp tester was
feeling the glass. Guppies are very hardy and heavy breeders so there's
a surplus. Dead, overload fish are simply consumed by the other
guppies. Any that rot and go to the bottom of the tube were consumed by
the plant. The combo of dead plant and dead fish made its own layer of
"earth" at the bottom of the ecosystem. The plant dutifully kept
consuming it with root systems....recycling the biomass. The only input
was light, for photosynthesis. O2 and CO2 couldn't escape the glass
envelope.

In operation in the transmitter, these tubes run blood red graphite
plates bombarded 24/7 with high energy electrons from the 6000V plate
voltage. The plate could burn off 1000 watts of power. Another
impressive tube you could use is a sheet metal plated triode called the
833A which powered AM radio for 70 years, many still on the air in 1KW
AM tranmitters. They are very cheap and reliable tubes. They also have
a great glass envelope for a fishtank...(c;

Marty wrote in
:

I have a diamond blade for my bandsaw, it'll cut just about anything
on the planet. Kerf is about 0.050", you run it at about 4000fpm, yes
that's 4000. Pricey though, first you have to have the bandsaw, then
the blade. Blade goes for about 800 bucks,,, but it does last a long
time.

Cheers
Martin



In the side of my old Air Force stepvan's steel walls with steel frames,
there are two 8000 Btu window airconditioners mounted to aluminum angle
brackets under each. We used a diamond wheel to cut the rectangle. It
melted through that steel like butter and the heat didn't seem to effect
the diamond-embedded ceramic blade, which got nearly white hot. Only took
a couple of minutes and we were using another wheel to smooth the edges to
a perfect surface to mount them. Amazing tools....very high speed.