Re: 15GP22 Rebuild Attempt in France - Soon!

[old_tv_nut]

Sorry to hear Scotty is in a cast, but also glad to hear he's still a part of this effort. And of course, if the super-secret sealant works on a 15G, I will be eager to have it tried on the 21AX that re-leaked on its first try.

[TubeType]

Originally Posted by jhalphen

Hi Guys,

John, Bob,

"We will then test out our leak sealing protocall which is top secret and proprietary. We believe it has a very good chance of sealing the leaks that are on the ultor ring, but only time will tell."

Not nice to not play ball, i've shared all info openly.

The common effort is to rebuild 15G's not become Maddoff-rich with proprietary secrets.

Good day

JH

Good evening Jerome,

I'm sure, when all is said and done, the "top secret" and "proprietary" protocall will be shown to be something quite "common" and "ordinary".

Bob & John, please tell us something about your top secret and proprietary protocall.

Kindest regards,

Terry Cheek

[ohohyodafarted]

WOW Jerome!!!

Don't get your nose all bent out of shape. John and I BOTH agreed to send RACS that stem that we developed and it didn't cost RACS a stinking dime.

We have thousands of dollars invested in the R&D of that stem alone.

You have no right to critisize us. The fact is, that John and I have spent MANY THOUSANDS of dollars of our own money, and hundreds of hours in R&D, and nobody has contributed a single red cent to our effort.

John and I will keep the formula for sealing the tubes proprietary if it is successful.

How the hell do you expect us to recover even a small part of our investment if we give our trade secrets away.

This is not only an attempt, by John and myself, to do something that has been needed by members of our hobby for many many years, but it is also a business venture.

John and I are not a multi-millionires with deep pockets. And our efforts are not for the purposes of charity. We need to be able to possibly recover our costs of R&D by offering this service to other collectors at a small profit for each tube rebuilt.

If and when our process proves successful, and we have recovered our costs of developement, John and I will, no doubt, be happy to donate the technique to the public.

Until that time, you will just have to be patient and accept the fact that John and I deserve a fair shake, and some gratitude for all the time and huge amount of money we have invested.

And just to emphasize a point here, I don't suppose that RACS will be willing to rebuild 15GP22's for free, Will They??? Oh yes and as I recall; weren't those glass ringlets that RACS developed to rebuild Pyrex tubes also proprietary? So I guess this is tit for tat. Eh? And if they weren't proprietary maybe you should have RACS send a handfull of those rings to Scotty at Hawkeye in repayment for the stem that John and I sent them for free.

"The common effort is to rebuild 15G's not become Maddoff-rich with proprietary secrets." ..... Comparing me to the likes of Bernie Madoff has to be just about the most insulting thing anyone has ever said to me.

"The Common effort" ...... sounds pretty socialistic to me and make no mistake about it, I am a free market capitalist. God bless America and the Red White and Blue!

Seriously Jerome you were WAY out of line with your comments!!! and have really pised me off with your attitude. So much so that I may never agree to divulge what we have developed. This kind of attitude reminds me of how the European Unoin constantly picks upon U.S. coporations who have intellectual property to license. I am thinking of Microsoft and Qualcomm just to name a few.

I could go on and on but what's the point?

And please understand that I am speaking for myself. John Folsom had no part of this post, and should not reflect upon him.

Bob Galanter

[John Folsom]

OK, let's all calm down. Take a deep breath.

We are not in competition with RACS, if they can rebuild 15Gs more cost effectively than Scotty (factoring in shipping costs in either case), then I will be the first one in line to sign up for their services, regardless of how much $$ Bob and I have poured down the rat-hole :-).

As for the leak detection, here is a sketch and photo of the cross section of the 15G flange seal. There are 2 glass to metal seals, and 3 (!) metal to metal welds, any one of which can be the source of the leak.

Bob and I speculate that the leak is most likely at the metal-to-metal welds which join the flat metal pieces together, though we have no science to back this up.

It is not obvious to me that the HV needle probe technique would work here. As John Yurkon points out, the metal in the flange would be at the HV potential and attempting to needle probe would not work.

As for the top secret leak sealing protocol, it is not a secret, I have discussed it with others, and the materials used are common knowledge in the industry. It may work, it may not (I am not quite as optimistic as Bob, for reason I will not go into here). Certianly RACS would be aware of our approach, and has likely rejected it for the same reasons that make me a bit dubious. But it is worth a try, I may be wrong (I often am!)

And frit glass is another approach, and at some point we may attempt this as well.

But for any sealing protocol to work, what we really need a way to locate the leak so it can be addressed directly. If the HV method can be made to work, that would be optimum. Helium leak detection is another possibility, but it requires expensive equipment, vacuum pumps and mass spectrometer.

BTW, I am sure some of you are thinking "VACSEAL!" After discussions with several people in industry working with ultra high vacuum systems, there seems to be a consistent opinion that VACSEAL will not be useful in this appplication, so we have abandoned thoughts of attempting to seal leakers using this product.

When Scotty recovers and starts rebuilding tubes again, Bob and I are ready to make another attempt using a non-leaker tube and our new and improved stems.

Good luck to us all!