With the popularity of 3D printers and the current cult of vacuum tubes, it’s shocking we haven’t seen someone do this before.
[Peter] printed his own sockets for a few vacuum tubes he had lying around. After designing them on his computer, [Peter] printed them out on his local hackerspace’s 3D printer.
After printing out the plastic parts, [Peter] needed to add a few strips of metal for a conductor. He used a few pieces of an ATX power supply; a little difficult to fit, but something that works all the same.
So far, [Peter] has whipped up a few sockets for UX5 and VT76 tubes, UX6, B7G (7 pin mini), and B9D Magnoval tubes. No Nixie sockets yet, but it’s enough diversity to build your own tube amp using the most common designs. Now if we could only make our own transformers with laser cutters and 3D printers…
excellent work! The only way to get rare sockets in some cases.
Only concern is i hope the resin can handle the heat of the tubes without drying and cracking any time on.
resin? The 3d printer he used doesn’t use resin.
I second that but i don’t think the material the printer is using makes my comment any different.
No way I’m watching a 1-hour video, just to answer the questions that come to mind. Questions like: how do you vacuum-seal the valves?
Also no way you’re reading the article to find out it’s not a video about sealing valves it’s a video about printing the socket.
since you no way read articles and no way watch
They go from start to finish with the design process. and the printing of the socket, and then finishing it up ready for use.
It’s funny, I just got in a 3d printed plug shell for powering my movie camera from Shapeways, then saw this. It amused me.
You can always make planar transformers, with a couple of multi-layer PCBs from PCB pool, and some cheap ferrites…
You’d be better off cutting out sockets from pcb layers with your cnc. Extruded plastic won’t be safe for some tubes.
Why would you print and laser cut your own transformers?? They are pretty straightforward to make and cheap too….. There is some math involved, but there are plenty of tutorials about this on the web.
Also, in these kind of supplies, a little DC-DC converter goes a long way as the high frequency switching allows the use of a MUCH smaller and more efficient transformer with a lot less ripple to filter out than the old school 60 Hz line transformers….. Ferrite cores are cheap and readily available and you can easily pump 1000 watts (well, VA more properly) through a transformer that ways less than a half a pound.
Ha! “…current cult of vacuum tubes.” ICWYDT.
the tubes i’ve worked with so far don’t seem to get hot pins, only the glass seems to heat up, even after several hours of operation at full power
the tubes i’ve worked with so far don’t seem to get hot pins, only the glass seems to heat up, even after several hours of operation at full power
I think he’ll find out that it’s not easy to make reliable socket contacts. They actually need to be designed, made from the right metal, folded carefully…
Any experience doing this? Links in action?…
i will be more awsome if you can make these http://www.oneillselectronicmuseum.com/largephotos/tubes/yel/yel68.jpg
the material used is pla .. the contact are pretty good at this point … never had a single failure, never had a “meltdown” even with tubes that got pretty hot.
A video over 90 minutes. Clearly this needs to be broken into segments, segments that went through some heavy editing. Place it into watch later, when I can’t find anything else to sit down to watch. As it is I don’t have access to a 3D printer. A tube that requires a hard to source socket isn’t one I’d be using.
i thought about using sub pins with either polymorph or sugru ..wasn’t sure if it would work very well though
For the people that are interested in this, i have created a Parametric Tube Socket in openscad, you can download it http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:43267
All the designs of Peter and Duality you can find on our wiki:
http://tkkrlab.nl/wiki/Tube_Socket
You can use heat resistant stuff no problem. Also its more pro but you can 3 scan to a cad program and you have most of the work done with some touch ups prior to printing. FYI you will need a decent 3D scanner not some 400 dollar junker to get good accurate stuff.