What is the most powerful vacuum tube ever made?

How about an aviation motor generator with 50/60 Hz (single phase) input and 400 Hz output. It greatly reduces the transformer size (as well as filter capacitor size, in case the 400 Hz is single phase)..

Reply to
upsidedown
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the efficiency of those things is crappy, you'd lose nearly half the power in it.

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

Dunno. If you're talking about microwave, it's a Gyrotron: I'm looking into building the most pewerful tube audio amplifier

You're probably ok at 3250 to 7500 volts, but 15kV will probably turn your audio amplifier into an x-ray generator. Have your lead shielded underwear handy.

If you really want high power audio, what you want is a pneumatic modulator, amplifier, and directional horn: Please note that sound are nothing more than controlled changes in air pressure. You don't need a loudspeaker: to do that. Just something that will move lots of air quickly, such as a big air compressor. For example, if you happen to have a 150 horsepower air compressor, and high power fluidics (air is a compressible fluid) modulator and amplifier handy, you can build rather high power sound system: 150 hp * 745 watts/hp = 112,000 watts maximum audio power Actually, it's only about half that, since it takes almost as much power to run the modulator as it does to product the output pressure changes.

I worked for a company that built something like that in the 1960's while I was in early college. It was suppose to be used for projecting propaganda recordings at the enemy across the WWII style battlefield. I helped build the calibration lab, so I didn't get to see the monster in action very often.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

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"The maximum anode dissipation rating is 1500 kW steady state"

Reply to
Lasse Langwadt Christensen

Perhaps not the most powerful tube, the RCA 5831 triode has a lot to offer. With a filament requirement of 6V at 2,220A it can be useful to heat the house as well. With 10 KV on the plates in a push-pull configuration it can deliver about

370 KW which might be sufficient to impress all audiophiles within a radius of ~10 miles, when fitted with appropriate speakers. Complete details about this tube:
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Reply to
Arid ace

Here's a 2,158 KW power tetrode

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A 7.5MW pulse amplifier

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Datenblatt_7835-V1_Burle.pdf

This should excite the hams. The 1963 RCA Power Tube Catalog

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Reply to
Steve Wilson

Don't forget to protect yer output driver amp tubes too! They'll likely need a different lower voltage bias supply but for an amp of this size just the driver for the huge final tubes (power triodes, probably?) is gonna be like the equivalent of a Marshall stack amp power stage, maybe bigger.

And maybe even the drivers for the drivers.

Reply to
bitrex

Not an issue with full wave rectified 15 kVac.

Below 25kVdc, the X-ray spectrum is just the continuum, above 25 kV nasty discrete X-ray lines will also appear. For this reason the power supply for old shadow mask CRTs also contained a shunt regulator (like the PD500 power triode) to limit the CRT anode voltage to 25 kV.

Reply to
upsidedown

They got you beat -

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Well it's only 2,000 watts per channel more than you wanted, why not ?

I like how it says it was designed for research into high intensity sound.

No shit ? Really ? Could it be ? You think ?

Reply to
jurb6006

Here's a homebrew reference design for a 1000 watt monoblock, look at that xfmr just look at the mufucka. It probably cost about a grand.

OP is talking about building an amp five times that. I can think of better ways to throw money away like buying a boat maybe

Reply to
bitrex

Thanks. I couldn't recall at what voltage the problems start and was too lazy to check. Looks like 20kV is where a vacuum tube starts to produce x-rays. Interesting video shows how it works: "Creating X-rays with a standard vacuum tube"

I've tried this experiment with various vacuum tubes. My voltage source was smaller and only went to 25kV (powder coating paint gun): so I didn't see the continuous x-rays as in the video at 30kV.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

upsidedown wrote

The PD500 was a real Xray source though. A college of mine was repairing a monitor with it and the metal HV cage open. His face got burned by the radiation. The glass of those tubes would turn into a special bluish color over time . There are you tube movies of someone using those tubes to take X-ray pictures of stuff.

Reply to
<698839253X6D445TD

The guy is apparently not concerned about efficiency. To get 5000 watts RMS out using tubes of course he will require some 20kW of input, a couple more or less would not matter.

Would he use a modern Class-D amplifier he would have a mains to output effciency typically over 80%.

Reply to
Rob

You're just moving the iron and copper bulk from the transformer and filter to the frequency converter, and taking in addition the maintenance problems of the rotating machinery.

400 Hz hum is more annoying than the customary 50/60 Hz hum, so you'll need better filtering there. Been there, done that, in 35 years in avionics engineering.
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-TV
Reply to
Tauno Voipio

The MW-range tubes were quite popular in the AM broadcasting industry. Tailor-made -- yes, rare -- no, not really. A good question, if we count only the continuous-power tubes, the radar-style gigawatt ratings are cheating.

Best regards, Piotr

Reply to
Piotr Wyderski

Polish Radio Channel 1 (then at 227kHz) used to run on 2MW, feeding the talles antenna mast in world (a full-blown half-wave, 646m). EIRP=3MW.

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Sometimes it caused dieelectric breakdown and the arc current was audio-modulated. This way you could hear our supreme leader speaking from the sky. :->

Then several morons were hired to do some maintenance, with the following result:

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Best regards, Piotr

Reply to
Piotr Wyderski

I'm pretty sure I've seen a wall socket compatible with these somewhere:

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Best regards, Piotr

Reply to
Piotr Wyderski

Not at all, I think he and his friends are working happily on that and the progress is just fine:

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Best regards, Piotr

Reply to
Piotr Wyderski

If that's true then someone isn't thinking it through. He has a limited mains supply but wants as much P_out as possible.

Sure, but he specifically wants valves & analogue.

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

It was the exchange of the guy ropes going awry.

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-TV
Reply to
Tauno Voipio

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