Tube radios with PC boards. Questions....

[Kingfisher]

Originally Posted by dieseljeep

Zenith only made two years of tube radios that used PC boards. It seems they had too much trouble with the boards, because of the heat.

Exactly! Why did Zenith give up on PCBs but not everyone else?

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by Kingfisher

Exactly! Why did Zenith give up on PCBs but not everyone else?

The PC boards in the Zenith tube radios had a problem with the foil lifting from the heat. The first Royal 500 transistor radio had a hand wired chassis.
The other radio firms never had much problem with their PC board radios.
Naturally, they were the lowest priced radios in their line.

[jr_tech]

Originally Posted by Kingfisher

Exactly! Why did Zenith give up on PCBs but not everyone else?

Another example, a fairly conservative instrument manufacturer, Tektronix, ventured into PC boards for the tube operated type 310 oscilloscope in 1955. For the later 310A, the company resumed use of the traditional hand wiring on Tek-made ceramic terminal strips:

http://w140.com/tekwiki/wiki/310

Perhaps less conservative manufactures were less sensitive to field reliability issues that were related to early PC boards.

jr