This video really brought back some memories... The F-106 Delta Dart I used to work on had a nice, powerful, high-maintenance Hughes radar in it, and I must say, that the trigger thyratron was hands-down the most beautiful tube you ever saw when it was conducting...think I still have one laying around here somewhere...

Brings back memories from the late 50's - early 60's working on long rage search radar (FPS-20, FPS-6). Of course our thyratrons were much bigger (VC1257 and 1749?). As I recall, they were pretty long lived. Thanks for the memories.

Excellent video. I've got a JRC IG35P Thyratron that was an on board spare for a 50kW X-Band radar. Early 80s tech. Scary things to be working on while they were operating.

thanks to AvE i can't help but hearing "silicon controlled rectumfrier"

what a super interesting device! thank you for showing it off :)

Hi Kerry. Been following you since eevblog posted a video of yours a year ago. Thanks for a year of great videos.

Safety first!! When playing with insanely high voltage ALWAYS let somebody, whom you are not emotionally attached to and who does not owe you any money (though you can owe them money!!), who may or may not be wearing a red shirt, operate the apparatus.

Well done, just recommend removing your wedding ring while playing with high voltages.

Thank you sir For great description on thyratron working in very much clarity its application in radar transmission.

I've always been fascinated with Thyratrons. Back in the early 1960s in 8th grade built a thyratron based proximity detector using a 2D21 miniature tube. Recently for fun I rebuilt the circuit.

Great explanation, now I know what a thryatron is and how it works. Thanks. Also glad you're doing this experiment not Electroboom.

Thank you . You are on my “go to” list of channels. Right alongside WA2EW (Alan w.) / IMSAI guy / tx RX / RF newbie / etc.. Great video. Thank you again.

Thank you, Dave Kim!! 👍😉

That was awesome and very informative. I'm always curious about rare devices especially valves. Thanks so much for sharing. 😉👌

Great demo and explanation!

thanks for posting Kerry , very informative , really enjoyed it . liked and subbed .

Thank you very much for your well spoken, well presented demonstration, My compliments to you as an exemplary teacher of this subject mater which is typicaly difficult to grasp without presentations such as this one.

At first I was thinking this was like a Gyrotron: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrotron However, I saw the number of cycles and realized it is not used in the same way as an oscillator like I was thinking... no where near 100's of GHz: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_oscillator Beautiful device and excellent detailed presentation. Thanks for sharing.

Great explanation!

Very cool Kerry.

Great, very complicated resistor burner ;) Had lot of fun wathing it :)

are we able to get microwave frequency by using tubelight circuit diodes just by using neodymium magnet around the tubelight or diodes which are chirping during starting

I had experience working with a thyratron tube back in 1969-70. IT was in the transmitter module of the APS/20 airborne RADAR system installed in the SP-2H Navy patrol plane. This system involved over 20 "black boxes" and formed a one megawatt airborne search RADAR system. The tube was about 14 inches tall and about 5-6 inches across. It was said to operate at 12,000 volts and 400 milliamps. The "box" it was in weighed over 400 pounds and included the magnatron.

Our CPS-9 radar had a similar thyratron tube. The Radar manual noted the this tube can produce X-Rays.. Also the cabinet door had a Xray warning tag/sticker!

Fantastic video thank you! Very informative indeed!

Pulse duration also counts. Life of the cathode will be severely degraded if you force a pulse duration longer than the maximum specified. (due to ion bombardment) Of course in your use with a few dozen pulses you will not notice any degradation, but after thousands of pulses the tube will be trash.

FPS-66/67 A large and beautiful klystron, encased in lead and liquid cooled, dumped its energy into a massive pulse forming network and was discharged into the waveguide by the hydrogen thyratron, creating one radar pulse.

Is that a good idea to put it vertically? Is it working properly in horizontal position?

Thanks for an interesting video. Beware of 100R resistor failure at some point. They are usually not rated for high pulse current and high voltage. I've have resistors fail in almost similar use by pulses. In my application the caps were a lot smaller (as well as voltages) and the resistors were not as beefy as 100W ones but I still needed very heavy overrating to make them last long enough. I would not trust the load emptying the capasitor bank (especially if resistor can fail in open mode) nor any bleader to work properly. I always double check with a meter and preferably also short it out mechanically before touching the parts. i got very carefull after a couple smaller jolts from (smaller) capasitors that did not blead properly. Better safe than sorry.

An interesting device Kerry, thanks for the video. But given the high voltages involved, I would like to have seen a more sturdy testbed system. Not just for safety, but for clarity as well. And I would also have liked to see some scope traces, and possibly some characterization of the device. eg: trigger voltages required, variation with hydrogen generator voltage etc.. But I know some of that would take a lot more work to do, so thanks anyway.

Isn't there another solid state method? Something like 20 lower value (thus cheaper) transistors that are switched together in parallel? Only caveat from what I understand is that they have to be matched to each other within a narrow tolerance, as any triggering too soon or too late could cause problems. I wonder how that would compare in terms of cost and effectiveness vs. the big transistor and this particular vacuum tube?

nicely done. Cleaver feature in your tube, in my H2 thyratron the heater and reservoir are internally parallel.

Hi Kerry, could you please explain from your spec sheet why the pulse duration parameters are listed as 4 - 12us and you used a 30mS pulse to drive the Thyratron? Obviously it works, but could it cause any damage to to the device? Much appreciated!

GREAT VIDEO !!!

I was looking at Thyratrons recently for building a surge generator and also Pyratrons but difficult to get them out of the USA as they can be used as nuclear triggers. I do have some information on various tubes and data on them. You can buy mosfet based series switches I think these modules are used on the Schaffner surge generator. Difficult to homebrew with the multiple trigger coils. I think I was looking for something that would handle a 200 Amp peak current fed via a 12 ohm source impedance. Also want a 1uS rise time. Very interesting and timely video you may have saved me some work. I guess it’s also a low side driver which is a problem for my application although maybe you can float the filament as is done for high voltage rectifier valves. But this looks like a lot of fun.

Great video and excellent description. I hope you have a secondary way to discharge the capacitor other than the thyratron! After firing through a DUT, without measurement there's no way to know how much of the capacitor's energy was actually released. The resistors, for example, may have blown open and not fully discharged the caps. Do you have a shorting strap or other method to discharge after testing?

Great video, dude :)

The cathode wire should have been the same gauge as the anode, did you forget that ?

@Paul Patterson Agreed, that's not a pretty injury.

Can you post the complete circuit with the ouptut capacitor and the voltade multiplier and the DUT? Thanks

So, it looks lime s1 is more for charging the trigger capacitor yet it is a push button. I thought that you were discribing it as such. My queztions are wbich is it? And how do you do the other? Charge and fire the trigger circuit?

This was awesome. When are you making version II with a tesla coil in series? Are spark gap limited in current like this tube?

You are a brave man.....

I have a question. I'm trying to build a hydrogen torch. We spoke briefly about my power supply and I watched another guys video about stacking DC power supplies. Heres my idea. Stack two 30V 10A and then add another one on the back side of the hho cell. My thoughts are keeping the electrical flow going while not pushing the lead ps.

So it's essentially a capacitor?

Really nice! Do you think that is possible to have these thyratrons to have around 10ns HV (~2kV) pulse width? Or what would be the minimum pulse width for these devices? Doesn't need to be your specific model.

Can the two 6V inputs be AC or DC, even if used separately or independently? Thanks so much for this rare video--Do you know of an other videos that show the operation of the more powerful white ceramic styles?

Kerry can you construct a circuit using this to pulse a BLDC motor and show it working?

Can you tell me what this valve is used for ? I might have missed it in the first part ?

How to find out which pin in a tube is the heater ?

Cool vid. Now make tesla coil triggered by one instead of loud spark gap ;)

I have a solution for your dead regulator problem. Try a NPN power transistor, tying collector and base together with the input pin of the regulator, and the emitter connected to the output pin. Overcurrent spikes can route through the transistor and still be regulated.

Thanks for showing, I can use this for my coil gun.

No actual resistors were harmed during the making of this experiment

What are the practical applications ?

Noise pollution? I regularly hear others attempting to force their favorite noise onto me, people's dogs, hiphop, xmas music, kids screaming. As long as I'm not interrupting a bird chirping morning, phukem. 2000 volts, 6 joules, music to my ears. What? Don't you love it? Kids these days.

PS.... Craftsman makes nice tools, but is that meter a CAT (IV) Rating ? Just a thought... Darn Innovative Test of a very cool tube component ! Nice Scopes in the background too... I would love seeing this components characteristics on a multi channel o-scope, to see the different thresholds and resultant triggered effects !!!

I recently came into possession of a deuterium thyratron in pristine condition. It is like twice as long and twice as wide as the one in this video. I have zero knowledge about electronics and feel grossly underqualified to own such a device. What do they do? What are they used for? After watching this video, I feel like I got a pretty good deal for the ten dollars that I payed for it. 😅

So has anyone used these in a Tesla setup just curious?

@Kerry Wong Don't be lazy Make some slip-on connectors for the tube pins !

Beautiful

I thought that I would be buried only once. Then along came university physics. Buried in schematics and equations. Extremely dangerous. But I think that I would be 'somewhat' more nervous about ten amperes than one thousand volts. Super fascinating vid, thanks so much.

I have a galon jug size thyratron in my hoard... 25kV 400A rated. Kind of thinking about tesla coil... I might even have capacitors needed for this, but the power supply..... Nothing short of igbt powered inverter fed from all three phases would give me decent repetition rate.. although a beefy zvs and flyback for first test... Kind of scary

Can you control or run a Bldc motor with these?

Hey, I wonder if when you trigger it it causes some RF interferences around, that maybe a dumb question but RF is like magic for me :p

How does the voltage drop over the thyratron compare to a high voltage igbt? Great video btw

What happens if you don't power the hydrogen generator ?

How come this tube does not explode violently, since it has hydrogen in it, and an arc as well?

i dont understand why you had 3.5KV on the caps when you had not closed the gate yet.... isnt the whole idea of a tube to only pass voltage when you close the gate. you showed a schematic and then showed the circuit with all new components. such as the caps, voltage doubler and transformer. you also named the parts in reverse order to what they were on the schematic. confusing. why is there 3.5KV on the out put of the tube with the gate open. this does not make sense to me?

Did I miss something? What is the application of this cool Russian tube. Other than being EMP proof. EDIT: One google later I'm embarrassed. My first job in electronics was at Crydom Controls in El Segundo, CA. a division of International Rectifier (circa 1973). I would build small runs of high power controllers using very large SCR's & heatsinks. Typical range 480V at 100A. Thanks for the video.

Ну очень интересная установка по выжиганию сопротивлений.

TRY A STACK OF 1000V OR 800V THYRISTORSTriggering the lowest thyristor should trigger them all,. 4 x 1000v thyristors should be ok for 3500v

Starts of with a warning for 'proper equipment' while showing a tube with wires wound around the pins instead of a socket :)

So what it is it used for?

My gosh, this is cool, but don't do this at home. This circuit has enough current delivery capacity to kill you outright if you're careless or unlucky !!!

use it to make a shoulder fired rail gun

Dangerous setup. Secure everything for a start. Put that microswitch in a plastic box. Mount the tube in a socket and mount it vertical. Use crimps where you can.

Did you noticed while burning first resistor, Thyratron was gloging with still light (no pulse)? propably coz of arc keeping current flow for a second or longer.

The question is did it generate X-rays?

Советский тиратрон в Штатах? А есть американские аналоги?

Jump to 25:57 for real action!

Is that you Bawwy Kwipke?

This is like a triode of gas. Isn't it?

In the transfer to the load

Is it putting of x-rays? Otherwise I'm good.

I want more of this kinda creative stuff. I like the reviews but I feel like we're getting 5% of your knowledge.

This can be used to get rid of mosquitoes.

As an experienced electronics technician (from the tube days through to today), I have to say it was interesting until you got to the point of exploding a 100 ohm 1/4 watt resistor? Really? You can just plug that into the wall and get the same effect. You could get more miles from your high voltage supply, and more dramatic effect, if you use that to supply a helium-neon laser tube in open air. Now that's some dramatic power demonstration! Sorry, outside of teaching the younger audience some basic tube principles (which is why I gave you a like), the drama was completely missing from the climax.

Can you use that tube in a ampler circuit ?

use neodymium magnet like magnetrons do then will it become a sasta jugaad like that

Dart Vader, where are though?

I would like to see a measurement across the high voltage capacitor, after the discharge. Turn off the high voltage transformer, hit the button, then measure the high voltage capacitor, to see what the residual voltage is, after the Thyratron cuts off. The small capacitor stores 21.4 joules of energy at 3500 volts. Not much. I wonder if an inductor could replace the 100 Ohm, 25 watt resistor, to pass a greater percentage of the stored energy into the load. even if the Thyristor exceeds 50 amps, it won't happen long enough to cause any spot heating, or excessive temperature rise on the cathode. The hope is, that the inductor will saturate, allowing a high current to flow, after the arc has established, to keep from pitting the cathode, or the anode. My application for such a thyratron, would be to re-gauss ALNICO magnets. Contacts don't tend to hold up really well to repeated capacitive discharges.

These blow the doors off those poser helium ones.

Time was when these were restricted under "dual use" regulations, because of their possible use in nuclear weapon firing circuits. Now you can by them on Ebay. Duh!

What about x-rays? Awsome fat isolators in there 😍

Nice video but... get to the point, Edith.

Everybody just go to 20:00

Large black band = infinite ohms ....

¡now you can build your own atomic bomb!. it's interesting you can buy soviet thyratron when US ones are highly restricted national security items

I tought I will see the glow with and without hydrogen, and with various level of voltage on hydrogen generator. It was dissappointing.