| My arrival at ETM coincided with a transformer-tank building boom. I was busy testing cookie-cutters while Val Butzof headed that up. We used transformers from a guy named Max Hill, owner of Hiltek. Some of ETM's first ~15 tanks killed Max, I'm convinced of it. He died of a massive corronary, amid massive rework. His was a chapter ending in tragedy, but in his heyday, Max just about co-founded ETM. Max unconditionally advanced ETM big transformers, 50 KV 100 KW in one instance, on credit. And he'd give us shields where no-one else would dare. He pushed things a little. Nobody ran our systems pegged at full voltage. Emboldened, perhaps he went too far. Max's world ended when we delivered to Group-14 at Litton Electron Devices. Those guys were openly hostile. They had a line of tubes needing 200 more volts than our 30.8 KV cathode supply delivered. "Hal's tubes" ran fine 200V short. I pleaded nearly in tears with SN.-214-operator, Jeff Cameron, to stop running Hal's tubes. Two tanks had blown--simultaneously--in one system. Poor Max had never been submitted to such thugs. Litton was blowing one or two tanks a week. Tempers flaired. Max's waking-nightmare had us paralyzed too. He was blaming us. So our customer, Bud Bedford, went to view a carcass disection. Bud caught Max skimping: Max used particle board where his drawing showed dowels. And that's where it was always breaking down. Max was suddenly obligated to redo all ten large transformers. He died halfway through the upgrade. Max's wife kept the place going afterwards, under the name A to Z transformers. Finally we hired someone experienced in transformer-tank design: Al Johnson was a great asset when he came aboard from Ayden Energy, (and Cober before that). He spotted a major design-flaw in our Hiltek/Litton collector supply tanks: there was no room between 18 rectifier sticks and an oil-capacitor body. Someone "fixed" that by sliding a sheet of 1/8"-thick G-10 greenglass into the 1/4" gap. The resulting dilectric sandwich of dissimilar constants was then subjected to 28 KVAC riding on 30.8-KVDC. The tanks came back with white smokey-residue and copper electrolytic-deposition inside. We moved the cap a couple of inches and that cleaned it right up. Al Johnson did some big oil-tanks, 35 KV, 140 KW; for the hughes CWI test-sets. He introduced us to finned-tube heat-exchangers, for water-cooling of our oil. But after Max died, ETM purchased tanks from Stangenes instead of making them. This went on for years. Stangenese tanks held up. Our's didn't. |
| With our three big Navy jobs: SDR, Driver Predriver, and the CFA lines, we were forced to do our own tanks. We were poor. Stangenese wouldn't touch us. Ray Brown of Laselco advanced us everything we needed in magnetics. In doing so, Ray became a player in the high-power market. His excellence scaled nicely. Gunnar told him oversize everything, to meet the impediance spec. He did and resulting isolation was great too. At the assembly kickoff-meeting, I thought we had a consensus: all under-lid plumbing joints would be soldered. Al Johnson used unions and other tapered national pipe thread (NPT) connections under his lids. I wanted more certainty of coolant-loop integrity. As it turned out, half my tanks got what I wanted. The other half, got teflon-tape joints between the finned-tube heat-exchanger system and the lid. Soldering followed tourquing of teflon-taped sweat-fit/NPT-adaptors: buffoonery was back in vogue. The assembly supervisor appeared willing but endlessly evaded the rework. I should have cut it off with a hack saw. I was vacationing in Alaska when side-effects surfaced. Coils had fallen off the first of Ray Brown's 38 big transformers. A smokescreen was issued: Gunnar had Ray brace the windings for "225 Horsepower worth of torque." Poor Ray stood by us and added Gunnar's braces. But Rich pullman saw water in the bottom of the tank when he cleaned it. Months later, a paralelling choke blew under another lid. There wasn't obvious water contamination. But the blatantly shoddy crafstmanship was still present. Then-CEO, John Capovilla, saw me digging in and asked what was up. So I explained. His exact words were "It doesn't exist. . . these little details are in your head." He'd hoped I'd "learn" to shut up. But it was he who was interrupting. Richard Pullman, our transformer-tank specialist, was explaining a possibility of silver-soldering from the top of the lid, and creating the needed hermetic seal. His idea came to pass. It was ironic that reworking transformer-tanks required our assembly supervisor to be on vacation. If it weren't for that, I would have been powerless to protect the best-interests of all involved. Ray Brown trusted us implicitly. Ray bet everything on us by advancing us those transformers. Blameless, he honored the warranty issues anyway. Meanwhile, our team was dishing it up like prison-cooking--in the wake of Max Hill--clinging stubbornly to total cluelessness. If there are any funky tanks left, they can be identified by removing the water-fittings from the top of the lid. A look down the holes might reveal teflon-tape sealing the under-side mating threads. If it's not a silver-solder joint, clean it up and add a fillet. This will blacken the paint around the fittings on the tank top (the underside is unpainted). Afterward, retouch the external paint, and you'll be good to go. |
| Group IQ can be as high as the smartest member. It can be much dumber. Such IQ-loss gives us a measure of the stress and interference introduced by the group (5). Participating in the dumbed-down group-effort saps ambition in the highest functioning members. Learned-helplessness sets in without hope of empowerment. |
| Hipotronics makes a pretty good tank. But they provide air-wound line reactors to meet a 10% impediance spec. Their stock diodes occasionally blew so we substituted our own. Stray fields from those reactors bothered us: In one case, an adjacent steel cabinet-door slammed shut loudly with each crowbar firing. |
| My dad got me a Plastic Capacitors brand 50 KVDC 1.5 MA supply for $50 from his friend Willie Johnson. Given that, a test cup, and a Velcon pump/filter, we did achieve a lot. But it was the school of hard knocks. I left that 50 KV supply at ETM when I moved to Alaska. Someone promptly blew it out. |
| Al Johnson introduced the concept of "water cooled air" using Lytron heat exchangers, in response to a Hughes specification prohibiting hot air exhaust. It is the way to go. Operators at hughes worked in 105 degree rooms full of old air-cooled units. Some of them would open our calibration door to cool their faces. All ETM units feature cabinets pressurized with filtered air. |
| Transformer Tanks: Trials and Tribulations |