Check out this great video showing how power vacuum tubes are made. This is footage from the Shuguang electron tube factory and shows the process of building the plate assembly for an EL34 tube. wwwthetubestore...
Watching this I was kind of surprised that modern tubes actually seem to rely on human assembly to a much higher degree than they did at the peak of vacuum tube/valve production in the mid-sixties. This is pretty clearly illustrated in this documentary about the legendary Mullard company, at or near the height of its production capacity: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE--GgWIlvyEL8.html
I don't think that the actual assembly of the grids, cathodes, and plates to the mica spacers has ever been done by machine. Tubes have always involved a fair amount of skilled hand work. The parts to make them can all be stamped out by fully automated machines, but nobody has ever built robots that assemble those parts into a completed tube structure.
I'd guess one could automate 95% of all necessary steps with 2 roundtables having enough 6-axis robots for manipulations and spot-welding. By that approach its mostly a software designed machine, one could do every possible and impossible tube on a single machine.
@@markusweissenbock6337 How many vacuum tubes do you think retail every single day anywhere in the world? The fact its probably 5 digits is why this is still not automated.
Were the Shuguang EL34's supposed to be a copy of the Matsushita EL34's. The plates of the Shuguangs look almost identical to their Japanese counterparts.
I just received my shuguang EL34-B yesterday, it sounds amazing! EL34-B is a beam tetrode fully compatible with original EL34 which is a true pentode. So compare it with original EL34 is not fair.
I’ve tried a lot of different tubes on my Reisong a10. But I always come back to the PSvane EL34b. These tubes are superbly musical and rich in sound. I’ve listened to songs on these tubes that I’ve listened for decades on a quality solid state integrated amp. But with these tubes I’ve heard warm notes that my other amp couldn’t pick up. I’m a huge fan of these tubes. Gotta buy some more
