C'mon Kevin, you gotta try harder. Three years now?

Did you ever find any more info on it?

No more info... doubt if I ever will find out any more on this one...

Wow. that is an antique..looks like a very simple circuit but i bet it is impossible to find any replacement diode rectifier tubes of that size.

I have been having a heck of a time finding smaller tubes for my old ham radio equipment.

Easy to find...
Look on E-bay...
I needed two when I got this welder...

If I remember it I will ask my brother where he gets his tubes at.
He is all the time working on tube amps for his guitars.
He has to order tubes sometimes. He has a good source.

Pooh Bear

To say the least, that is very interesting!!

Almost looks like something from the Edison Museum here in Jersey.

Which may be a place to look for information.

This looks more like an old battery charger than a welder to me. Those rectifier bulbs were designed for a maximum load of about 6 amperes each which would be too small for practical welding. GE made them under the name "Tungar" and Westinghouse had their own version called "Rectigon", and there were several other manufacturers. As far as I know the bulbs are no longer made but sometimes they turn up on e-bay for around $20-$25 each if unused.
Mike

This welder came with really old weld leads pluged in... So I'm sure its a welder

There is a place in Colorado Springs that has a lot of old old/new equipment. Its like going through a museum at times. Well, a lot of junk too. Its called OEM Parts. Their prices are a little out of line IMO, but they have some strange and hard to find stuff. But to find it, you sort of have to "be there". It would seem unlikely to me that the old dudes that work there would actually go "look" for what you want :).

Kurt

Lazy Pup,
My brother gets most of his tubes from
Antique Electronics. www.tubesandmore.com
or from
Angela Instruments www.angela.com

He gets original tubes that come from Russia.
These tubes are original never been used tubes that have been in storage all this time.
They are better than the ones that are currently manufactured.
========================================

Kevin,
is that maybe the resistor unit for a carbon arc welder setup?

Pooh Bear

Finding tubes is easy,,the problem is my 2000watt linear amplifier requires replacing the finals with matched sets.

Finding the 500z tubes is easy, finding a matched set of four is nearly impossible.

The last time i replaced them i had to match out the set from scratch, which means i had to sort through 19 tubes to find the four that matched..That gets a bit pricey when the tubes are running $25 to $35 each.

So what happens if they dont match ???
Can't you tweek something else to make up the difference ???

My brother buys a lot of matched sets for his amplifiers.
They do the matching for him when he buys the tubes.

Pooh Bear

Electron tubes are a heat critical component. When operated in an audio amplifier or in a radio transmitter used for AM,FM or even single sideband it is pretty easy to maintain the envelope temperatures, but when transmitting Continuous Wave (CW or Morse Code) The tubes are rapidly being keyed off and on, thus the internal temperatures of the tubes doesnt remain constant. The problem is even worse in a push-pull type circuit. If it is not monitored closely you begin to have serious frequency shifts, or excessive harmonics. Harmonics are even multiples of your transmit frequency which result in interference to other communications services.

The harmonics also cause excessive heat buildup in the final tubes, coaxial feed lines to the antennas and in a worst case scenario can burn out segments of the antennas themselves. I really hate climbing the tower and going through all the motions of taking a 100lb antenna down to replace a trap or gama match.

Given that there is no point on this planet that cannot be reached with a 150 watt transmitter, it is very seldom that I ever bother to even heat up the old 2000 watt amplifier, but on occassion when trying to contact a rare distant station in severe operating conditions I sometimes kick it on, but even then I never load it past my 1500 watt license limits.

Probably I should just break down and build myself a 500 or 600 watt solid state linear amp and retire that old beast.