Licron Crystal lifetime?

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Hmmm carbon 33 !, i did not know this product, wil will take a look. since i got several problems. one of them is i got really good conducting carbon ink, but it wont mix with non water based binders. water mixed binders such as acryl , do not give me the scratch resistance i would like. i will look for the carbon 33. maybe this is more easy to dilute to a usable coating

do you have any idea where to get it? i cant find it in google
 
I know graphite coating, but that has way to low resisance. , it an be used as coating underneith the aluminium strips to contact the actual coating with the charge ring it Will be around the Several K mark instead of the M mark. The 2 coin methode does Not suck if you the same methode on both. If i read 6 M on a quad panel i van replicatie this . As long as i use the dame methode . It doen Not mean there coating is 6 M :) but it does mean they are. Both the same.
 
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If one measures short and wide strip then the resistance is basically much lower and easier to measure, also you still have to use HV power supply and voltmeter as ampermeter. Contact between coins and film is highly unreliable.

yes i know :( , but i get consistent readings on the original quad foil. i recon if i replicate that im pretty close ? no mater the shitty way of measuring it>? or am i forgetting something. if you measure 2 resistances with the same shitty setup there should be a comparison. (as long as they are nog extreme far apart, and not near the limit of the meter)
 
Wrinex..
Den Haag 80% humidity today......like here in the US....in south.fl...340 days a year over 60%
it killed my love of ESL.s.......if you can play your sound low. maybe...I cant-wont...better it sounds.... with the low ESL THD...I like it loud....I need my image to fill the room.....top to bottem......my panels can drop 5db in output..one day to the next..............hehe.. but my old Apogee ribbons an magnepans....give 80-90% of the esl sound....thanks for your input on the licron.....it seems to work for most..so thay say anyway
 
Wrinex..
Den Haag 80% humidity today......like here in the US....in south.fl...340 days a year over 60%
it killed my love of ESL.s.......if you can play your sound low. maybe...I cant-wont...better it sounds.... with the low ESL THD...I like it loud....I need my image to fill the room.....top to bottem......my panels can drop 5db in output..one day to the next..............hehe.. but my old Apogee ribbons an magnepans....give 80-90% of the esl sound....thanks for your input on the licron.....it seems to work for most..so thay say anyway

Well i Dont want to dismiss Licron completely, i might be screwing up somewhere , but I have no clue where and I had enough I want something that stays and conducts no mater what. Like the quad coating which has no influence in humidity , at least I measure the same always
 
well...I have had old quad 57....stock not re-work panels...Soundlab...Janzen...Acoustat martinlogan....all lose output in my house... with the higher humidity.....
good luck with finding what well work...I have tried for 30 years... I am done..i can get them all to work.....but with low output ...most of the time less I run the Ac all the time
if I try to air my place out....it like there bias is off..the fuse pop...30 years is a nuf...
were humidity never gose above 50%...esl can work-sound great...but this is just one mans finding..
 
The distortion that comes with less resistivity increases at low frequency.
So if you drive your esl speaker with an active cross over the risistivity can be much less.
I have a high pass filter to the electrostats at 200Hz. Which means that my coating can have 10 times lower resistance. It also has to do with amplitude i guess.
Maybe we should try to find dissipative electric mylar?
 
Well thinned down graphite 33, when sprayed it loses all kind of adhesion... when used with an brush it does work, so i guess when sprayed with an airbush the medium used dries before it hits the mylar...... so you can remove it with ur finger. complete clean mylar :). i might try to use water and alcohol instead of only alcohol. since it evaporate quickly of course. alcohol is the preferd dilute product according to the datasheet. but maybe an aibrush makes to thin particles and does not wet properly... might need a bigger airbush...

i did some tests with Aceton and pure carbon, then added few ml of polyurethane. mix it at high speed. then add thinner to get the evaporation time up so it wont drie before it lands on the mylar. the polyurethane sticks well to the mylar and its only 4ml on 150ml of acetone/thinner witch all evaporates ofcourse. resistance is weird. one coat gave me no result. 2 coats gave me 120Meg (NOT TRUE resistance, but my goal is 6 Meg also not true resistance) but after an hour it dropped to 11Meg so i think the polyurethane still shrinks and is packing the carbon together, making the resistance come down.

it does look almost exactly the same as the quad panels. it just feel a bit more rough. i might have thicker carbon particles who knows. or its because it is not dried completely since polyurethane is completely hardened in more then 24 hours.
 
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soo i bought a spraypaint gun.. damned i have 2 airbushes one that has a bigger nozzle (0.5), but it does not whet enough the second airbush is nice for precision work (0.3), and will let the coating dry before it hits the mylar. and now i bought a paintgun with top loading so it wont sputter when the bottle is almost empty. and it has a nozzle of 0.8-1mm and can spray flat.. witch is really nice i hate the round patern airbushes produce. since the panels are rectangles. i sooo hope this will work. getting sick of black hands :) and stains all over the place haha

been cleaning my sink for an hour since the beker of the blender gave way :) thinner eats these bekers for breakfast :)


this is the one i bought. very cheap http://lemato.nl/product/hbm-verfspuit-met-100-ml-beker-model-2/

my compressor cant handle continued spraying. but hell its only small pieces i have to spray


Oh the coating dropped to 4.5Meg by now, so i will wait and keep measuring to see where it setle
 
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if you mean the graphite 30 , then the answer is no. not yet at least. did not did any more tests. waited for some tools to arrive.

One thing i dont like about the graphite spray. is even when you make a thin coating that conducts a tiny bit, when you polish it everything changes dramatically , i don't like this fact since it will be hard to predict. with carbon this is not an issue, you can polish whatever you like it wont change.

i did a reading on a crude coating sprayed with airbrush carbon with 50% acetone 50% thinner and a tiny amount of PU. i have the mix still sitting in a jar, and i noticed it separates within a night. that's usually not a good thing. so the particles might be to large, and the stuff is not stable in solution. the test bit i sprayed was 16-18 micron thick on a 6 micron mylar. so 10-12 micron thick coating. thats to thick in my opinion. i will look up the post where the thickness was stated of a ESL63 panel. since it has one top coating and one useless coating (that does not conduct) and see what the combined thickness is. this would be my goal or only the thickness of the conductive coating. so i could chose to use a second coating or leave it out.

Since i got esl63's with and without back coating. so i am not sure if it is needed since the ones without where playing fine after 35 years, except the stators fell apart of course :)

i bought a bigger spray gun to, so i could use either graphite or carbon coating and dilute it more and make the whole thing wet better. so i wont be spraying dried up carbon or graphite against a mylar piece :) (witch falls of with just touching it)
 
Well i finally ordered some staticide 6500 spray it will arrive tomorrow. pretty expensive with shipping 60 euro;s............... damned.... will be doing some tests to see what i get for resistance. if it is ok i coat a panel or 2 then i will leave it be and remeasure @2.85 volt in a few weeks or months. to see if this coating does stay or disappears like licron does.
 
Well, per my conversation with the rep bottled one is better than spray. Most likely because you do add some staff to pressurize can. And it's definitely cheaper.
BTW
http://www.amazon.com/ACL-Staticide...qid=1458283371&sr=1-1&keywords=staticide+6500
Anyway try to dilute it somewhat to get a proper resistance before coating membrane. Even though it's water based it dries too quick to make final smearing by hand. I hope you have measuring tool. In my case two coin staff did not work with Staticide. And yes heat does help to cure it. Use tons of acetone/PCB degreaser to clean film to be coated.
 
problem is i cant order from amazone they dont ship spray cans by plane....well i could measure licron with the 2 coin trick, so i guess i should be able to measure this to. yeah i wish i could get the non stpay Jug that woul;d save allot of money. But there is a downside as well. the jug expires and the can does not.
 
Well got the staticide in..... what a crap. the smell alone rings a bell, i know this smell from somewhere..... well when aplied with a foam brush, surface tension will be **** after 5 minutes and pearls will form, there is no way you get an even coating. when forced drying with a heat source it is even worse. also it is indeed on my meter 200Meg un measurable.and i dont want that. since i can measure ESl63 panels easy with this method. like really really easy even on the 20 meg setting. so i went back to my tatoo ink, i used 0.4 grams of tatoo ink on 10 grams of alcohol, (keton 80%, must try the 98 isoprop) and 0.7 grams acryl. getting around 20-60 Meg compared to the original coating of 6 Meg. at laest i can measure it and carbon wont disappear thats for sure. i redid 3 panels just for tests. i used a foam brush so the coating is not as even as the original , but everyone using licron with a foambrush will end up with uneven coating as well. i then insanely close mic ed the original panel compared to the new coated panels.. and they are the same. so solid content (except that the ink and acryl has liquids that evaporate as well) is 1-10 , i can coat 2 panels with this mixture. and i measured one piece folded 32 times and i ended up with

=0.0,2296mm / 32 = 0,007175 mm

so 7.2 micron - 6 micron used for test pieces = ~1.2micron, well thats ok i guess. :) sounds perfectly fine to me.

next , i got one panel that does not reach the required 70 Hz resonance freq (more 50 Hz), so @ very very very loud passages i can hear it slam into the stator.... damned. well **** it is at such high volume playing allot of lows im not sure how much further i could push a higher res panel. but for the next rebuild i want my stretch jig ready since it does mater how high this res is!.


lets see how long the coating holds :)
 
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