Author Topic: Vintage Tek Restoration pictures by Martin (Read 129246 times)

Martin.M · « **on:** January 18, 2015, 08:13:31 pm »

following the desire of Yago I open this tread about the restoration of vintage Tek scopes.

Story. I have collected and restoratet a lot of them in years of work and study.
Electronics is not my job, I am a sheet metal worker. But from kids time - solding !

I will start with pictures from some nice old Tek, restoration reports will follow soon (also that is work ..)

You can sort old Tek by numbering.

200 series are little portables, cold.
300 series are mostly SONY-Tek made in japan, mostly they are portables also
400 series are compact scopes for dayly work, mostly cold, some older of them have tubes or nuvistors also
500 series are Classic Tek, very glowing, some of them use plugins.
600 series: also , I know only one.
2000 series: modern compact scopes, some of them made in UK
5000 series: the small laboratory class with plugins, cold
7000 series: the high laboratory class with plugins, cold

Begin.

Tek 310A is a "service scope" from the late 50`s, made in USA. there are 33 tubes glowing inside, the bandwith of that single beam scope is 4MHz cal.
It needs 175 Watts to work. They was oftenly in use for the service of glowing computers by IBM. A special fun is the foldet chassis technology, you can open that scope like a book. There is no cards inside, all is soldet in ceramic strips.

2x Tek310A

Remember: For soldering ceramic strips is a special solder to use with 3% silver. Every Tek oldy have a little roll inside, for repairs.

Tek 305 DMM

is a 5MHz SONY-Tek, Single Beam portable 2 Channels + autorange multimeter. It have recharchable batterys inside. The multimeter have a own DC-DC converter, so it is earth-free. When no button ofthe multimeter is pressed you can read the voltage of the battery.

All transistors inside are in sockets, not soldet.

Tek 422, a Classic.

Type 422 is around 1965 made, a 15MHz single beam 2 channels Tek in MIL quality. Early 422 have nuvistor inputs, later changed to Fet. In the high voltage area are glowing rectifiers, the rest of the scope is cold. The is no fan, no wholes, so a 422 looks inside always like brandnew from production. And most what you see is golden.... the quality of this instrument is amazing !
There was a option battery pack, usind 20 pcs. of the large D-cells to work 4 hours portable. A 422 eat arout 100 Watts.

Tek 453, 453A, 454, 454A

453 and 453A are 50 MHz, 454 and 454A are 150 MHz Classic Tek scopes in MIL quality. See 422, early use nuvistor inputs, later use Fet- and in the High voltage are little rectifier tubes 5642, the rest is cold. They have a fan and must be cleaned inside yearly.

This is my 453, on a scope mobil K212

to be continued with 500 series.

greetings

Martin

tautech · « **Reply #1 on:** January 18, 2015, 08:17:50 pm »

More please.

Thanks for sharing.

Martin.M · « **Reply #2 on:** January 18, 2015, 08:34:32 pm »

Tek 500 Series, the "Classic Tek".

The care, restoration and collecting of them is very special. They test not only volts and frequencys, also the WAF (womens acceptance factor)

Small 500 Tek have a weight of 40 pouds, bigger ones are to handle by two persons or they have their own Tek mobile to roll in the floor...
We will see the most of them here.

Its impossible to collect them all, so there must be a guide line. My was, to collect the complete glowing dual beam series from Tek.
This is done

Tek 502, later 502A is a Dual Beam NF Scope, low bandwith but high sensitive differential input on both channels. 40 pounds come in the house, welcome !

all must be washed, a very lot of work. Also around every part at the ceramic strips, many hours cleaning...

later you can see what you have done...

he is working

take a place.

in continue we look for a Tek 551

This problem is much bigger.

greetings
Martin

robrenz · « **Reply #3 on:** January 18, 2015, 08:39:01 pm »

Very nice work Martin.M

as a fellow restorer I can really appreciate what you have done.

Martin.M · « **Reply #4 on:** January 18, 2015, 08:45:47 pm »

Tek 551, Dual Beam Osciloscope.

This is one of the greatest Classic Tek, It have a seperate PSU and requires always his scope mobile (Type 500/53)
The bandwith is at minimum 25 MHz, the scope have one delayed time base. The CRT have common horizontal deflection plates and seperate vertikal deflection plates for both channels. 2 glowing kathodes, a true Dual Beam scope.
Relatet to the plugins a 551 use around 100 tubes and eat 850 Watt from the plug.

the tubes stabilized PSU, open. It have also a fan like the Top.

leftside from our 551 we see the Tek 555 "triple nickel" what will be the next one in collection.

greetings
Martin

Martin.M · « **Reply #5 on:** January 18, 2015, 08:57:45 pm »

Tek555 "triple nickel"

33 MHz , Dual Beam, all is double, 2 time base also.
Like the Tek 551, but extendet. 555 have additional a saturation reactor for regulating the complete heating of all tubes also, so it can work feed by generators also, a military requirement. A triple nickel use when 2 CA plugs are installed 117 tubes and needs 1kW from the plug.

the restoration I will type tomorrow, this will be a longer story

greetings
Martin

Martin.M · « **Reply #6 on:** January 18, 2015, 09:57:19 pm »

the 555 was after cleaning and change of some tired tubes allready working.

... but times later arrived a second one, and this was in a very poor condition.

there was only a bezel for camera mounting, but missing the Tek typical aluminium frame, so i looked to get a spare part.
Also a very lot of dust all over, and some demolition in the scope mobile, defect PSU, a missing beam2 and some other.
At first i swapped the PSU with the running one from the first 555 to continue the testing.

1.) missing Beam 2

Testing and measuring in the high voltage area of beam 2 with a VTVM. The old instrument found a missing isolation between the filament of Beam2 and ground, allready is there a high isolation, I found 60k.

After desoldering of some wires I tested at the heating transformer coil and found there the missing isolation !

60k

The only possible way to repair that is another high isolated heating transformer to feed the filament of the CRT, Beam2. I made one from a old AC Adaptor, the small transformer is a high isolatet one, very good to repair the Tek. The filament is wired to the cathode, so there is a -1.500Volts related to the chassis present and this reqires the high isolation

at the 2 screws to fix the small transformator

done

starting the oldie again...

that is a DUAL-Beam

Then the defect PSU...

washing of coarse, all

cleaning the contacts of the relais, swapping defect time relais tube 6NO45 and the regulating diode 2AS15A...

the power switch was bad, the light bulb also, changed to new..

testing all voltages, the +225V was too high, found a resistor there what was much higher then OK, changed to a new..

then the PSU start allready working

to continue washing ....

here you see the tube familys of the 2 seperate channels following the plugins...

a working 555

but the pre-owner have cuttet a part of the front plate of the scope mobile to use it as storage for anything

I have rebuild the plate

and send in a eloxal company for coating

complete with the new plate it is useful

after calibrating the old 555 was finally clean and allready working.

can any Tek glow like a triple nickel?

may be a 517, I will look to get one

now there are 2 Dual beams to complete the line, the 565 and the 556

to be continued

valvedoctor · « **Reply #7 on:** January 18, 2015, 10:10:32 pm »

Great work Martin, I have lots of vintage test gear but never found a classic 500 series scope. It's one of my wishes to find one.

photon · « **Reply #8 on:** January 18, 2015, 10:15:46 pm »

Bravo, Martin!

Martin.M · « **Reply #9 on:** January 18, 2015, 10:20:05 pm »

hello valvedoctor from canada,

look at http://sphere.bc.ca/test/tek1.html to find one, this is one of the best places.

greetings
Martin

Martin.M · « **Reply #10 on:** January 18, 2015, 10:34:11 pm »

Tek 565

10MHz Dual Beam, all double, 2 vertical slots for plugins.

This nice and very glowing Tek is to handle by 2 persons

I have buyed that, it was healthy ! Only complete washing, a new calibration and welcome in the collection.

greetings
Martin

Yago · « **Reply #11 on:** January 18, 2015, 10:46:01 pm »

Thank you , thank you, thank you!!!

These are so great, I think the pictures have made me gay.
I coming out as a Tekosexual!

O0

The inside of Matins scopes are cleaner than the average surgical theatre in UK!

Brilliant work and collection Martin, greatest of respect and gratitude from me.

Thank you again!

Martin.M · « **Reply #12 on:** January 18, 2015, 10:48:06 pm »

Tek 556, the last warm Dual Beam of Tektronix.

this one was my first Classic Tek, I was young and stupid. There was a bad deflection tube, I found that directly.
But a missing Beam2 problem in high voltage, I changed all tubes there, buyed spare HV transformer and some other much expensive things without catching the problem. At very last I made measuring all resistors there and found a bad 20k, this ! was the problem.

556 ist to handle by 2 persons, after breakfast, not before.
It is a Dual Beam, all double, full 50MHz.
The socket side of the CRT is like the arm from a man, all is extremly large in this machine.
On the picture the 556 is plugged with a 4-channels at Beam1 and a spectrum analyzer pluging at Beam2. So Tek may not tell us a mixed domain oscilloscope is a brandnew idea...

- end of glowing Dual Beam here -

when you go anywhere to pickup a Tek you want to have, oftenly the Tek is not allone. And you can not get this and dont accept the others, you bring them all at home. So there arrive some other classic Tek in your home who are no part of your wish list. Enjoy and give them also a good home

531, 533A, 535A, 545A, a Transistor Curve Tracer 575, a Rack-565 and some others,

to be continued.

greetings
Martin

TerraHertz · « **Reply #13 on:** January 19, 2015, 01:08:24 am »

Fantastic and beautiful! I love these old Tek scopes so much! But simply don't have the space and money to collect any, in competition with other pursuits also demanding space and money. Thanks for all the pictures! You're restoring them very finely, and it's great to see.

Very surprising to see the 502A had UHF input connectors. I didn't know any scope *ever* used those.
The need for special silver alloy solder for those ceramic tag strips was news to me too. What happens if you use ordinary tin-lead solder?

My sole token collection item from that era is a Tek 500 series plugin, so I'd have an example of the ceramic tag strips and valves construction to show people who've never seen such things.

free_electron · « **Reply #14 on:** January 19, 2015, 01:14:37 am »

and i thought i was nuts because i have 8 or 9 scopes ...

Electro Fan · « **Reply #15 on:** January 19, 2015, 01:24:33 am »

Tubes and Tektronix oscilloscopes, beautifully restored by a man who loves them (lots of them

)
Pretty fantastic

joeqsmith · « **Reply #16 on:** January 19, 2015, 01:28:47 am »

Nice!

What is the system on the far left center?

GreyWoolfe · « **Reply #17 on:** January 19, 2015, 02:38:56 am »

Quote from: valvedoctor on January 18, 2015, 10:10:32 pm

Great work Martin, I have lots of vintage test gear but never found a classic 500 series scope. It's one of my wishes to find one.

Valvedoctor, if you ever come to central Florida for vacation and have room in your vehicle, you can have a 533A. It will need work but you can have the joy of restoring. I took it as a conversation piece to prevent it from going to the recycle center.

tautech · « **Reply #18 on:** January 19, 2015, 07:02:09 am »

Martin.M I would never expected that your collection is so vast and so well restored.

As you can see there is much appreciation and admiration of your efforts.
We hope you have yet more to show.
Step by step restoration is a forum favorite.

Do you have any early solid-state units from the time TEK acquired UK based Telequipment?
I had a D83 (60 MHz) as my first scope and it was a nice unit despite the ongoing repairs required.

MadTux · « **Reply #19 on:** January 19, 2015, 07:26:58 am »

Quote from: joeqsmith on January 19, 2015, 01:28:47 am

What is the system on the far left center?

Looks like a Rhode & Schwarz Polyscope III
http://abload.de/img/010h8kvk.jpg
www.classicbroadcast.de/downloads/rohde_SWOB3.pdf

Has a frequency sweep generator inside and plots frequency vs amplitude of DUT (amplifier, filter etc)
But what is that strange connector on the bottom??

helius · « **Reply #20 on:** January 19, 2015, 07:54:39 am »

That is a Dezifix connector by Rohde&Schwarz.

http://www.helmut-singer.de/stock/-850494811.html

Similar idea to GR900 connectors, they are hermaphroditic.

Richard Head · « **Reply #21 on:** January 19, 2015, 08:03:47 am »

Martin M
What a great post. Thank you for sharing with us. Keep up the excellent work.

Martin.M · « **Reply #22 on:** January 19, 2015, 01:05:31 pm »

Quote from: tautech on January 19, 2015, 07:02:09 am

Do you have any early solid-state units from the time TEK acquired UK based Telequipment?

Telequipment, S51B, warm

there was a tired tube and little problems in the C from high voltage... and a lot of dust.
After restoration that scope was ready to work, and clean inside and outside.

The tubes are original from UK, "Brimar" labeled.

greetings
Martin

sean0118 · « **Reply #23 on:** January 19, 2015, 01:26:11 pm »

Wow, great work and nice collection, how many in total do you have?

Martin.M · « **Reply #24 on:** January 19, 2015, 01:36:37 pm »

Fine Arts by Tektronix

This spare part may be the most rare of all, its a never used, nos, CRT for a 549 Storage Oscilloscope.
It works like a normal CRT, additional the screen is splittet in 3 fields, and behind the phosphor screen are super fine gold meshes, connected.
This tube can store the picture ! seperate in the upper and the lower half of the screen. The storage technology was a milestone in engineering, made ba Tek in the own CRT manufacturing. There are also 2 flood cathodes to erase stored pictures from the screen.
In storage mode the scope work like a pen, where the point was runnig you will see the line. So it can display fast single shots, also very slowly movings as a Amplitude.

The life time of that CRT in normal mode was around 10.000 hours, in storage mode only 500 hours.
When the storage mode is burn out you can still use it as a normal high quality scope. This CRT was ugly expensive, hundrets of Dollars.
The separation of the screen in 2 storage and a non storage zone was made to extend life time by using only one of the both. The 3. zone ist left side from the both storages in full heigt, there is the start point of the beam, this will not be stored.

I am the lucky owner of this fresg CRT, also I have a Tek549 with a very healthy CRT inside.

At first we look pictures from the CRT.

greetings
Martin


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Author Topic: Vintage Tek Restoration pictures by Martin (Read 129246 times)

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