Broken front glass of GE locomotive style TV
 

Hi,

I have got a very nice GE locomotive style TV with a broken front glass. Does somebody has an idea whether it is possible to fix the glass, or to make a replica of it?

Kind regards,
Eckhard

ge
 

thats a fairly common set and they do come up on ebay , keep your eye open and eventually one will pop up

What a coincidence! I had one a long time ago with that exact type of crack. You could get a new piece made by a glass shop, but it would cost about $50, then you'd have to figure out a way to paint the inside of the glass correctly. That was a bad design, with the edges of the glass exposed. It doesn't take much to crack that 2-ply safety glass from the edges.

Charles

I have one but in my case the glass is missing.
-Tony

Thinking out loud here... Maybe the stuff used to fix chipped car windshields might work for this?

I have a glazier here in the city who has done some glassworks for me in the past. He probably can make a glass of similar size. But how can I manage the printings and paintings on the glass?

- Eckhard

Any glass shop worth their salt should be able to form and cut that piece of glass. The artwork painted on the back is going to be the major challenge.

But the chief concern I have is that the cabinet itself has probably become unglued at its edges to the point where there is no longer any dimensional stability, and the cabinet is freely wracking with handling, thus the diagonal crack. Put on a new piece of glass, and you'll be fine--until you need to pick up and move the set elsewhere, and you may be back to square one.

The cabinet is probably chock-a-block full of triangular pieces of wood stock in all the inside corners. You need to make sure that all the joint gluings are still intact on these if you want it to keep the next piece of glass you install.

The gray shouldn't be too bad; you could maybe do the striping with some vinyl stripe, or find a sign painter/professional striper to hand paint it on. I'm assuming the General Electric lettering is also painted on the back, and that would be tough. Probably a way to get it made in vinyl, too...that's pretty small for a sign machine.

The GE emblems are available online so that wouldnt be a problem. Luckily for you guys, you have the glass still so you can make the "Double D" size just right for painting. One good thing is behind the glass theres still the metal bezel that surrounds the tube. I've thought of getting a glass cut and reverse painting it to replace my missing one, i just havent got around to it. Luckily the tv works so i'm ahead as far as that goes. I still dont have the correct knobs for either the tv or the glass, so that has to be taken care of also. From what i heard, most of these glasses got broke from people tightening the two knobs at the top too tight causing the break. Every cracked one i've seen radiates from one knob or the other.
-Tony

Why not use a piece of 1/4" Plexiglas it won't crack. Then use a software program like FrameMaker or Visio to draw the artwork, color it, and send it to a large format printer. Cut out the printed artwork and set it under the Plexiglas.

What a great idea!!!! I'd try it. Only trick will be to get the correct arc on the top. Maybe find a wash tub or something with a circumference that matches the curve, then trace it?

Charles

I got one of these with the glass cracked on it too, it sounds like not too many of these sets survived with the glass intact.

I second the vote for trying Plexiglas (aka arcylic, Lucite, etc.). Cheap, and easy to work with hand tools, unlike glass.

Or if you're feeling lazy, there are plastics outfits that can make basically anything you want. There is a Tap Plastics store about 10 miles from my house, for example ( http://www.tapplastics.com/ ).

Phil

Hi to all,

thank you for your numerous replies. I will speak with the glazier, and next, I will try to find somebody, who makes plastics outfits. This might be the best way.

The GE tv set was OK before shipping, but it might be damaged on the way to Germany. Nevertheless, it is a very nice looking tv set.

Kind regards,
Eckhard

Both Visio and FrameMaker can scale a curve for you, you just need to know the dimension from the center of the curve to a flat line drawn between the end points. Printing is helped if you have a 36" wide DesignJet 350C like mine.

As for the art work, I would place the old part on a large flat bed scanner at Kinkos. Then i would have it printed in full color on a color printer onto clear acetate film and sandwich it between two pieces of thin glass cut to the exact shape and dimensions as the original glass.

The other alternative if you are willing to spend the moeny, is to take the newly cut glass to a silk screener along with the old part. A silk screener can photo the old art work on the old glass and print it on the new glass in multiple colors. This would cost about $75 per color, so I would vote for the Kinkos method because the value of the set is not that great.

Good Luck!

Once, I took a radio panel into Kinko's for scanning. They refused to let me put it on their scanner bed. Nothing allowed there but paper or equivalent. Risk of scratching the glass, I suppose.

Phil

Hi folks,

I will probably have somebody who is willing to make a replica of the front glass. The tv set is General Electric model 806.

Is somebody here interested in getting a replica, too?

It might be cheaper for us all to produce some more front glasses than only a unique replica.

Kind regards,
Eckhard

Does this look like the same cabinet and glass as your 806 set? The tube diagram inside is marked model C2505 or C2506. The CRT was a 10BP4.
If so, you can have both pieces or just the glass for postage from zip 19390.
They are from a parted out set. The green back paint is chipped away near the top as shown but the glass is not broken.
Cliff

I think once you have new glass, cut some pieces of tubing to the proper length to makes stops that slip over the knob bolts for the two fixing knobs at the top of the glass, and put felt washers under the knobs. Adjust the length of the tubing so that the knobs can be tightened just enough but not overtightend.

Reece

Hi Cliff,
If no one else speaks up, i would like to have the cabinet and glass. Just let me know.
Thanks,
Tony

I think you can't just use regular glass or plexiglass here for safety reasons as they're too weak to contain an implosion, you'll need laminated glass.

Good point. How about Lexan®? It should be pretty tough.

John Y.

I'm all in favor of being safe - and of not having my face cut to ribbons by shards of flying glass - but I suspect you may be overestimating the force of an implosion. Also not a very likely occurrence. I'm going to guess that although safety glass or lexan would be the best choice, nearly any old piece of glass would likely contain the debris from an implosion of a 10" tube. This would be a good project for "Mythbusters" (or an adventurous AK person who likes to blow stuff up) to test out!

--Dave

Neither of the two that myself and a friend tried to implode in our youth were very interesting. Some of the stories must be exaggerated.

It would be interesting for Mythbusters. Hopefully they would be CRTs that Hawkeye wouldn't accept for rebuild.

Here's some anecdotal info.

http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/crtfaq.htm#crtcir

John Y.

At about the time GE was making this set, Philco, Admiral and others were using plastic. Consider that if you were to pick up a 10BP4 and try to throw it through a sheet of plexiglass I really don't know if you could do it. I had to replace the one on a '50 Philco as some chemical had left spots etched in it. A replacement from the glass company (some sort of plexiglass, or whatever they sell) was cheap and easy to obtain. I suspect that plain window glass wouldn't really be safe but thicker or laminated glass should be fine.

John, that site you link to is quite impressive!

I would use plexi with a printed vinyl emblem behind it. that way if the plastic gets scratched or damaged, its easily replacable.

Each implosion is a story of its own, sometimes all the glass will just be sucked into a heap inside the set but but sometimes it's ejected with extreme violence and in the worst case scenario the neck/electron gun assembly will be propelled towards the screen at very high speeds and if this happens you need something really tough to stop it.

Keep in mind that plain glass may be smashed by the implosion's shockwave even before the glass shards start to scatter outward

also, some early B/W CRTs are made of thin, weak glass and are prone to spontaneous implosion.

Hello,

in the last days, I have picked the GE 806 tv set which was waiting for repair since months.

In the mains unit, one 5 Ohm resistor before the rectifiers was burned, I replaced it. The 19BG6 was also weak, I replaced it. One wax capacitor was leaky, I unsoldered one end and added a new one. After that, I reformed the electrolytics and switchet the set on. It showed a dim raster. Sound it working well.

The original 10BP4 was very weak and came with a brightener. I have rejuvenated the CRT and removed the brightener. Currently I am working with the bad picture tube, but when works are done, I want to replace it. I have got a good 10BP4 (0.4 ma) and a good 10FP4 (0.9 ma). Which picure tube might be the better selection for replacing?

Kind regards,
Eckhard

I'm pretty sure the original used a 10FP4 so I would go with that. It's a lot brighter too :)

Thanks for this advice. But before I will do it, I have to fix the low-contrast problem. The picture remains very dim no matter what the contrast control is set.

Hello,

meanwhile I have replaced the weak CRT by a 10FP4. The 10FP4 is really a lot brighter and shows an excellent picture.

The bad contrast depended on a dried electrolytic 10 uF capacitor in the video amplifier section. Vertical does not properly locked in. But this is a fault which I have to check with the scope.

Kind regards,
Eckhard

Nice job :thmbsp:
Are you going to replace all the old caps and selenium rectifiers?

I have a very similar set set only mine's not working so well ;)
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2638/...c274970bb0.jpg

:drool: That's the one that keeps eluding me. One of these days one will be mine. Either screen bezel design would be ok but I like the roundie one best, like Eckhard's set which is looking great BTW:thmbsp:

This set is not wanted as a daily watcher. So, it is my philosophy only to replace bad or weak parts until the set can be used for occasional operation. I don't like the look of a vintage chassis with modern parts. And when I replace caps for example, I left the original ones on the chassis.

Currently, I am still operating these vintage sets occasionally. I do not know who will own my collection when I passed away. But I believe that the ability to keep the sets running will diminish. Even today, I need many tools to operate the sets (115V mains transformer, television standard converters, digital to analog converters, and so on.) I assume that those people who will get these sets in the future would use them only for exhibitions or research purposes, and therefore it is recommended to keep them as original as possible. But this is my philosophy, this must not yours.

Vertical is not working in your set. Do you have the schematics? Did you measure the voltages at the vertical tube?

- Eckhard

Yes, I have all the service documentation for this set. Unfortunately, I have a backlog of about 20 sets to restore so I'm not sure when I'll get to it.

I do replace paper caps, electrolytics, seleniums and out of spec resistors, but I try to keep it looking as original as practical. For example, I restuff the can capacitors. I'm going to experiment with restuffing paper caps soon too. I also add a fuse or two for safety and to protect critical components.

I do operate my sets on a regular basis, but then it's easier for me. We still have one VHF and about 8 UHF low power analog broadcasts in my area. I also have my own low power VHF transmitter. All I need to do is turn a set on and maybe fiddle with the rabbit ears to watch it :)

Good luck with you projects.
Bob

Hello,

here is a short video showing the set working:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK5e1Zhf9Nw

Kind regards,
Eckhard