Engineering Drawings PCB Mount Tube Sockets

[gingertube]

Can anyone PLEASE provide a link etc for enginering drawings for 7, 8 and 9 pin PCB Mount Tube Sockets suitable for me to generate PCB footprints (I'm using Protel 99SE).

90 minutes of frustrating web searches has turned up a heap of folk quite happy to sell me sockets and NOT ONE has information to allow me to layout a PCB to use them - how pathethic.

Any parts suppliers want to take a lead and show that you are willing to provide a genuine service to the industry / DIY fraternity and not just take our money an run - post the drawings on your webpages, why not even a hotlink from the tubes sockets catalog page. In this age of information technology I can't quite fathom why this aspect of the industry (provsion of technical information on parts offered) continues to get worse rather than getting better. Two words "lazyness" and "greed" come immediately to mind. A click on the mouse and I can add the part to my shopping trolley but NO amount of searching, liberally interspersed with expletives, seems to reveal the required information to use them.

Any way, enough whinging for one post!
Cheers,
Ian

Electronic Design Engineer,
AUSTRALIA

[Junior]

i'm using Eagle and is looking for the footprint for 7, 8 and 9 pin PCB Mount Tube Sockets. would appreciate if anyone can post it here.

thanks

[kevinkr]

Given the lack of standardization in tube sockets these days I would make my own shapes, that is what I have done in the past in orcad and expresspcb. A couple of hours with the users manual should explain it all..

Kevin

[kevinkr]

Also have not been able to find too many drawings, although if you do a web search you may find a few. I used a set of calipers and measured the pin geometry - not trivial but you can do it.

Kevin

[userguide]

I found this site a month ago:

Valve & Nixie Socket Calculator

http://www.desmith.com/NMdS/Electronics/soculator.html

Perfect to generate my tiny sub-miniature tube socket into Eagle script.

Thanks to Nick de Smith for this great tool

[tubelab.com]

For those using Eagle, their USA web site, www.cadsoftusa.com has a downloadable library containing tube sockets. It is called tubes.zip. I used the 8 pin 5AR4 model in my TubelabSE PC board. It works well with the Chinese octal PC board sockets that are commonly sold. I did not try the 9 pin version since I had already made my own. The text is in German but the libraries work in any language.

[arnoldc]

Is there a tube socket library for ExpressPCB?

Kevin, can I beg you for your tube sockets library?

[kevinkr]

Hi Arnold,
Email me directdotheatedatgmaildotcom and I will send what I have along to you. I got them from a friend, the b9a is good, the others not so great, but are a starting point.

K

[poobah]

For the hour it will take you; I would buy the parts, measure and draw your own. I have been burned a few times using manufacturers drawings... been burned quite a few times using other peoples patterns. Anything mechanical/weird... I always buy the part first.

What happens often these days is drawings get converted so many times from metric to imperial and back again that errors creep. Probably done by a marketing weasle that doesn't realize a few thousands of an inch matters...