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Mercury rectifiers are beautiful. I once built a vacuum tube audio amplifier with directly heated triodes and mercury rectifiers, aiming for a symmetrical orang
by tlb 8y ago
Mercury rectifiers are beautiful. I once built a vacuum tube audio amplifier with directly heated triodes and mercury rectifiers, aiming for a symmetrical orange-blue-blue-orange glow.
It turned out that mercury rectifiers make a lot of electrical noise when they switch, so there was an annoying 120 Hz buzzing noise. But it did look cool.
- dekhn 8y agoI recently built a "vacuum tube nightlight" (http://www.electronixandmore.com/projects/vrtubenightlight/index.html http://www.electronixandmore.com/projects/vrtubenightlight/i...) because I thought the plasma tubes give off such a nice glow. But they aren't very bright and it's hard to see the plasma; these rectifiers are way more attractive but I can't bring myself to work with them.
- planteen 8y ago> these rectifiers are way more attractive but I can't bring myself to work with them. Cool project! Do you say you can't bring yourself to work with them for safety reasons (as in, I imagine mercury vapor is very dangerous if it escapes the tube) or is there another reason?
- dekhn 8y agojust the mercury vapor being dangerous.
- antiphase 8y agoMore likely that it generates a massive amount of wideband noise that happens to be modulated at 120Hz in this case.