A large tube plant in Saint Petersburg, Russia, is the main source for high-quality tubes distributed under the Svetlana brand name. But what does a tube plant look like, how are the tubes actually made? And can the Russians continue this quality production in the future?
In 1889 Yakov Aivaz established a company for producing paperossis, special Russian cigarettes with an integral tip. In 1913, this factory made a radical change in its production policy, starting the manufacture of incandescent lamps. In the following year, the company was renamed "Svetlana", an acronym created from the Russian expression meaning incandescent lamp.
In 1928, Svetlana started the production of vacuum tubes. The evolution was a natural one, since the first triode tube was invented with the aid of an ordinary lamp. As a lamp manufacturer, Svetlana already had the technology needed in tube production: glass handling, filament construction, and vacuum pumping. In 1937, Svetlana's power transmitting tubes won the Grand Prix prize at the International Exhibition in Paris.
Svetlana was the pioneer of the Soviet electronics industry, the goal of which was always an independence from Western technology. All-Soviet radio sets and later TV sets were, thus, major milestones in self-sufficiency. During the communist regime, Svetlana grew into a huge multibranch corporation, serving the Soviet military industry and employing 30,000 people.
In the semiconductor era, Svetlana exploited all technological steps: germanium and silicon transistors, integrated circuits, and microprocessors. But, as with all Soviet electronics, the military applications had first priority, and so the mass market and large production volume so vital in the production of microchips was never established.
Svetlana's proximity to technical universities and colleges provided a source of qualified research-and-development engineers. Furthermore, Svetlana had its own college, Technicum, for training production personnel. As a member of the military industry, Svetlana secured ample government funding for research and development.
The collapse of the Soviet Union caused a major tumult for all the Soviet military industry, largely centered in the Leningrad area. The military electronics companies desperately needed new markets for their products. The modest semiconductor products could in no way compete with Western and Japanese commodities, now openly available in Russia for anyone with money to spend.
Extraordinarily, the Western demand and Russian supply matched in an allegedly extinct product range: vacuum tubes. While most of the Western tube industry was closed down as obsolete, the Russians had maintained and perfected tube technology and production for military purposes. Now these hidden reserves were suddenly open for merchandising. The initial market response was nothing short of enthusiastic: the quality and appearance of the Russian tubes equaled, or even surpassed, those of the best traditional Western brand labels, but at a fraction of the cost of rare NOS tubes. Moreover, some tube types previously unseen in the West emerged in the market, such as the impressive 6C33B.
All manufacturing companies delivering products on a continuous basis need a reliable and continuous supply of components. But serious problems arose in the delivery of Russian tubes to Western markets. Some trade companies tried to deal with this problem by maintaining large stocks of tubes, but even this proved inadequate and very expensive. From the very beginning of its export activities, Svetlana was in a different bandwagon.
R&G International, an American company based in Huntsville, AL, had been in operation since 1984 and had solid experience in importing Russian and Chinese vacuum tubes to the US. In addressing the difficulties in delivering Russian tubes, R&G International convinced the Svetlana enterprise in 1992 to form a joint venture with them to broaden its production of tubes for Western markets.
Having been separated politically and economically for decades, the joint-venture partners no doubt experienced difficulties in adaptation. The owners of the companies have put a great deal of effort into establishing good personal relationships, the best way to neutralize the prejudices and suspicions that initially may have hampered the cooperation.
The American portion of the venture was established as Svetlana Electron Devices, Inc. and was given the exclusive rights to sell Svetlana's products in the West. The California office of the Svetlana Electron Devices, Inc., established in Portola Valley, is responsible for product planning and marketing, while the production takes place in St. Petersburg, Russia.
The interdependence of these two private companies produces some interesting benefits. The US partners provide funding, product planning based on customer and market demands, and an established marketing and distribution organization for the products. The Svetlana plant in St. Petersburg is able to provide a reliable source of products, with predictable and dependable delivery times. The highly qualified development department in St. Petersburg can also augment the product assortment of the company with new tube types. This is a revolutionary prospect, which makes it possible to respond to the changing tube markets in a completely new and progressive way.
Currently, Svetlana SPb (St. Petersburg) offers two separate product lines: glass tubes (receiving tubes) and ceramic tubes. The current types in production are the 6L6GC, EL34/6CA7, SV6550C, 6AS7G, 6BM8, EF86, EL509, 300B, SV572 series, and SV811 series. Not all of these types are produced in the St. Petersburg factory, some are fabricated in other Svetlana factories and elsewhere in Russia. Currently, the St. Petersburg plant produces nearly 200,000 glass tubes annually.
The ceramic tubes are large transmitting tubes, used mainly in high-power radio transmitters. They have mesh filaments and grids, and use forced air or water cooling. These tubes offer plate power dissipations from a few hundred watts up to one megawatt. The bigger tubes look like 6² cannon shells. The current production volume is about 20,000 ceramic tubes annually. Frequently, customized versions are designed and fabricated according to the purchaser's special requirements.
In the era of the old regime, it would have been utterly impossible to visit Svetlana. Today, everything has changed: I was given a very friendly and complete factory tour, which was arranged by the California office. Nothing was out of bounds, and I was urged to photograph anything I wished. In its period of peak activity, the whole Svetlana enterprise occupied a large area, spanning many city blocks and comprising some 15 large buildings. Due to rearrangements, reorganizations, and reductions in production, many of these buildings are now quiet and lifeless.
The operation of the Svetlana Electron Devices and the production of glass and ceramic tubes is gradually being consolidated into four adjacent buildings. A small imperial-style red-brick building, where the incandescent lamp factory initially started, still stands among the newer, gray and drab buildings. Appropriately, it houses the Svetlana Museum. A tube factory is a surprising collection of chemistry, physics, metallurgy, machine shops, precision mechanics, clean-room manufacturing, glassworks, vacuum technology, high-voltage engineering, electronics instrumentation, and testing. Thus, it is a combination of many highly specialized branches of industry.
Inside, to its benefit, the factory differs from most other Russian factories. Since Svetlana produces and manufactures some of its raw materials and all parts on its own, the company uses many machine tools, lathes, milling machines, cutters, and presses. The machinery, albeit aged, is well maintained and the production materials and facilities are well organized. Many of the special machines needed in tube manufacture are designed and built in-house.
Prior to the final tube assembly, several sub-assemblies have been prepared previously: the glass base with attached pins, various mica spacers and insulators, sheet metal anodes, getters, heater/cathode elements, and grid assemblies, wound with precision machines.
Cleanliness is everything in the final assembly of tubes. The level of dust particles in the room atmosphere is kept to a minimum: the staff wears lab coats and cloth-cap head coverings; shoes are also covered. The air is conditioned and cleaned with special microparticle filters. The tube-assembly department is the predecessor for the clean-room technique used in the modern semiconductor foundries.
All the myriad delicate parts that form the innards of the tube are put together by dexterous hands, occasionally welding two metal wires together, adding an insulating washer, and bending a metal tab with small pliers, to assemble the intricate structure that we see inside the glass envelope. Assembling tubes is all manual handwork, requiring a watchmaker's skill and precision.
After assembly, each unit is visually inspected for correct structure and alignment. Then the assemblies are scrupulously washed with a mixture of alcohol and distilled water, and blown dry with hot air to remove any traces of impurities that might later evaporate and thus contaminate the high vacuum inside the glass envelope.
The decontaminated sub-assemblies are cautiously inserted into dome-ended glass tubes, which become the outer housings of these elaborate miniature constructions. From this phase onward, a degree of automation is used in the glass work. The glass tubes are inserted into a welding machine, which automatically joins the base plates to the outer tubes. The machine contains tens of small blow torches, which slowly heat the rotating tubes and eventually melt the glass to form a uniform seam. The excess lengths of the outer tubes drop off when the melting point is achieved.
After a slow cool-down period, each tube is carefully inspected under a microscope for cracks or faults in glass seams. The tube is now very close to its final form, with only an extra glass pipe for evacuation protruding between the pins.
The vacuum pumping station is a monster of a machine, where the evacuation takes place in several successive stages. At the same time, internal tube parts are heated to a red glow with a radio-frequency field to release the absorbed gases from the metal and glass parts (degassing). Evacuation takes quite a long time, sometimes several hours for large tubes.
Two or three dozen tubes are processed at the same time by the pumping machine. At the end of the pumping, the small glass pipe connecting the tube to the evacuation pumps is melted with a flame. The external air pressure automatically pinches the tube shut, sealing the entire tube.
Even in the most effective evacuation, gases may still be liberated from the internal parts while the tube is in service. To safeguard against this, all tubes contain getter material, such as barium, capable of absorbing gas. The getter is initially a solid component held in a small metal cup installed at the top or bottom of the tube. After the evacuation, the getter cup is selectively heated with an rf field. The getter material flashes and condenses as a thin, shiny surface on the nearby glass wall.
In all production stages, the unfinished tubes are subject to frequent visual inspections. The unsatisfactory units are discarded. Svetlana attempts to indentify faulty tubes as early in the manufacturing process as possible. The finished tubes are burned-in for 2-3 hours on large racks before final testing. Every tube is tested for performance characteristics and visual appearance. The production yield is about 80% with mature tubes, initially somewhat lower with new types.
As evidence of Svetlana's development efforts, we have already seen the rebirth of the venerable EL34, the SV811, and the new SV572 series. Also the distinguished SV300B will soon be in production. No doubt, more types will follow in the near future.
The Svetlana marketing office in California is responsible for the selection of new types for development. The market experts can promptly detect the niche types which are demand worldwide but within the capabilities of the production plant. With good preliminary planning and sound market estimates, the development team- consisting of eight project engineers and 35 supporting persons directed by Technical Manager Boris V. Pavlov -has a good track record in the product development department.
During recent years, Mr. Pavlov's team has designed over 70 new tubes. The majority of these have been ceramic transmitting tubes, which are frequently customized to fit the intended application. But Svetlana has also added many time-honored and, in most cases, all but extinct classic tube types to its manufacturing program.
These re-released products are not just blueprint copies of the original types. They are the results of painstaking design and manufacturing experiments to produce a tube with electrical and sonic characteristics identical to the original model, while conforming to the plant's material stock and producing an adequate yield. The best example of this is the EL34, which has just started volume production. Svetlana's version of the 300B, still in the pre-production phase, will be in volume production as soon as its production procedures are fine-tuned.
A classic example of Russian/American cooperation is the introduction of the new SV811 and SV572 series. These six new tube types were developed very recently to satisfy the rapidly growing market for single-ended high-power amplifiers. They are available in a wide variety of amplification factors and all have directly heated thoriated tungsten filaments.
The SV572-series, with its titanium-coated graphite anode and unheard-of power capabilities for its size, is an prime example of the advanced Russian tube technology. This series opens up whole new design possibilities, which have been impossible to realize with previous types.
A myriad of rare and expensive metallurgical components are needed in the tube-manufacturing process, such as barium, manganese, molybdenum, and tungsten. Svetlana buys all of its raw materials from Russian vendors, so the company is not dependent upon any imported components. Local availability of the raw materials and in-house production of the sub-products seems to guarantee reliable and undelayed material purchases and, consequently, timely deliveries of the end products to the foreign customers.
The tubes' journey to the US is not straightforward, either. The products are first transported in trucks by a Scandinavian shipping agent, Scansped, to Finland - some 300 miles from St. Petersburg. From there, the goods are transported by air cargo to the US. All this, because St. Petersburg does not provide a carrier service reliable enough. If necessary, the goods can be promptly delivered anywhere in the world by air freight directly from Finland.
The Russian tube industry has benefitted from many extremely lucky coincidences: the shutdown of the Western tube industry due to a false belief that semiconductors will replace tubes totally, the preservation and maturation of high-quality tube technology in Soviet military electronics, and the almost miraculous renaissance of tube-based audio equipment. During the '90s, these circumstances have been successfully exploited to provide much-needed exports to Western countries.
Until now, tube production in Russia has utilized existing factories and manufacturing facilities. However, it seems that during recent years the Russian tube industry has finally reached a production level that will be hard to exceed without either degrading quality or investing significantly in manufacturing automation. Svetlana has readily recognized this fact, and is making new investments at present. Svetlana's factory is expanding to meet the demand for large ceramic industrial and broadcasting tubes, but the production capacity is now adequate to meet the demands for glass tubes. Svetlana's management believes that they are able to increase the production volume of glass tubes two- or three-fold with the present staff.
Tube manufacturing has always been, and still is, extremely labor-intensive. The manual production line is highly flexible, the volume can easily be adjusted to meet the market demand, and new products are quickly included once fine-tuned to match the market and the manufacturing process. However, production-volume increases are not always easily accomplished, since hiring and training new personnel is necessary.
Fortunately, Svetlana has been able to retain its key personnel, many of which are highly skilled workers in the manual fabrication process. The total number of employees has declined from 7,500 in peak days to 2,500, which seems to be the minimum staff needed to keep the whole production chain running smoothly.
In due time, the economical situation in Russia will gradually improve, and the standard of living will rise accordingly. This will inevitably be reflected in the increasing cost of labor. To keep the end-product pricing competitive, Svetlana must be able to increase productivity at the same rate as wages increase. The only way to do accomplish this is to introduce more automation to the production line. The big challenge for Svetlana will be to make the necessary investment in the production technology.
The natural place in the manufacturing process to start automating is with the final burn-in and testing of tubes. Although mostly manual, the whole process can be computer-controlled quite easily. This will free manual labor for more complicated tasks. Complete automation would require a very large production volume and long series, which is not feasible in tube production.
The final assembly of tubes will always involve highly skilled manual work for critical tasks. Maintaining a consistently high quality requires meticulous attention to details and expert knowledge of tube technology. Svetlana is already equipped with these vital assets in its experienced staff. Executing a well-planned investment program for production automation should maintain Svetlana's competitive advantage well into the future.
Let's hope that this new and encouraging Russo/American teamwork will be able to face the coming challenges with great success. Happy as we all are that so many time-proven tube types, such as the EL34, 811, and 300B, are again produced in Europe, it is only human to yearn for more: How about your version of 7591, KT66, or KT88, Svetlana?
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| Svetlana Electron Devices, Inc. |
| 8200 S. Memorial Pky., Huntsville, AL 35802, (205) 882-1344, FAX (306) 880-8020 3000 |
| Alpine Rd., Portola Valley, CA 94028, (415) 233-0429, FAX (415) 233-0439 |
| Svetlana Electron Devices, SPb Engles pr., 27 St. Petersburg Russia, 194156 |
| Website www.svetlana.com |