1. Home
  2. Hobby Electronics Basics
  3. Quartz Crystal stability?

Quartz Crystal stability?

Anybody have an idea on the frequency stability of older large low frequency quartz crystals compared to the stability of small tunning fork cyrstals used in watches?

I have an old 31.5Khz crystal in a large can that measures about 5/8 by

3/8 inch that I tried to use in a clock application, but the error is not consistant and seems to vary 5 or 10 seconds a day. Some days it's a few seconds seconds slow, and other days it's a few seconds fast. The error is not consistant, so I'm thinking it may be due to temperature changes. The oscillator voltage is regulated so the voltage is fairly stable.

Anybody have an idea of the temperature stability of the older large quartz crystals?

-Bill

Reply to
Bill Bowden
Loading thread data ...

Not without seeing the specs. Of course the modern ones perform better. Precision crystal oscillators in "the old days" were often in crystal ovens to keep the drift predictable. Tom

Reply to
Tom Biasi

You need the manufacturer's data. Generalities would be misleading.

Graham

Reply to
Eeyore

Yes, the specs would help, but I was thinking "bigger is better" so a large quartz crystal should be more stable than a smaller "tunning fork" variety?

Maybe that's not a good assumption?

-Bill

Reply to
Bill Bowden

Whatever the reason might be for the drift ...possibly temperature as already guessed by him ... i wonder if it wld (almost) average out if we were to use 3-4 crystals and take an average frequency. Before everybody explodes ...this is just a thought on deriving a more accurate clock using a RAIC ... Redundant Array of Inexpensive Crystals ............

Excusez moi ....my mind is already grinding away at the design of a circuit which cld average out a RAIC....

Reply to
sparc

Crystal cut, purity, type etc. who knows?

Reply to
Tom Biasi

ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.