Mercury wetted or ruthenium for reed relay?

[mzzj]

Where are all Old Farts from relay computer age?

Anyone who can shed some light on this?

[mzzj]

Originally posted by mzzj
Where are all Old Farts from relay computer age?

Anyone who can shed some light on this?

Hmmph, I guess I had to give up on this subject, as everyone seems virtually unheard of these things and are concentrating on gold-plated power poles and bulk-foil caps......

[janneman]

One thing to check for with the Hg ones is the mounting posistion. Some of them can only be used in a certain position.

The main reason for the development of the ruthenium sputtered contact types is the fact that the Hg ones are environmentally bad news, both in production as well as after discarding.

I have used many years Pickering type 101 ruthenium types for audio switching without any apparent problems.

Jan Didden

[analog_sa]

are concentrating on gold-plated power poles and bulk-foil caps......

I always response when someone calls me by name

It may be quite unrelated but here is my recent experience with relays.

I ordered some Nais relays thinking that if they are good enough for CJ Art they are probably good enough for me. First audition was of the normally closed set of contacts. Dunno if they stayed closed for too long and melted together but i could hardly tell there was anything new in the signal chain. Not so with the other pair which needed the coil to be energised. It may be the magnetic field or the way the contact surfaces press together - i have no idea, but it didn't sound too good.

After looking at the ART pics again i noticed the Nais type CJ use are latching so magnetic field is only applied at the moment of switching.

Could it be the latching principle is more important than the type of contact?

[mzzj]

Originally posted by janneman
One thing to check for with the Hg ones is the mounting posistion. Some of them can only be used in a certain position.

The main reason for the development of the ruthenium sputtered contact types is the fact that the Hg ones are environmentally bad news, both in production as well as after discarding.

I have used many years Pickering type 101 ruthenium types for audio switching without any apparent problems.

Jan Didden

Ok, these ones are not sensitive to mounting position, I guess that there is only minuscule amount of mercur on contact surfaces, not entire pool like some other types.

Mercury content of these is sooo small compared to all those fluorescent lamps everywhere that I am not going to lose my sleep over that. Dunno, maybe these are not so good then as these have so little mercury