[time-nuts] COTS cesium standard physics package life

[Bob Camp]

Hi

Are you interested in improving the likelihood of the unit working 30 years out or of it 
working 15 years out? The “operating” case will ultimately kill various parts in the standard
that would not die sitting on the shelf. The pumping process *may* extend the life of the tube…..
What the pumping process *will* do is reduce the amount of time needed to bring the unit
back to life after it has been on the shelf for 30 years. 

Bob

> On Sep 29, 2016, at 1:56 PM, Ruslan Nabioullin <rnabioullin at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On 09/29/2016 01:50 PM, John Ackermann N8UR wrote:
>> 2.  Tube vacuum and other physical aspects that may deteriorate over
>> time, whether or not the tube is operating.  The routine ion pumping
>> helps keep the vacuum up in storage, but is not as effective as the
>> continuous pumping that occurs during operation.
>> 
>> This is guesswork, but I suspect the warranty period was based on (1),
>> which is why it is shorter on the high-performance tubes, which deplete
>> cesium more rapidly.  There may also have been an assumption that not
>> many customers were buying Cs standards and putting them in storage.
> 
> But I'm interested in a different case---having the unit be continuously in operation (so continuous pumping, not two or three times per the period), but having the cesium physics package be in rare, intermittent operation.
> 
> -Ruslan
> _______________________________________________
> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
> To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
> and follow the instructions there.