 Hey everybody, welcome back today to Retro Tech. Hey, you know when you start to look at CRTs one of the big factors is going to be the tube and it should be in the back of your mind as to like how much life is actually on a CRT tube if this is one you're maybe looking to get or in My case if it's one I'm trying to check out and make sure the monitor is in good shape I want to start checking The tube and the tube life Where possible and in order to properly do that It's gonna require a really old tool now over my shoulder right here is a B&K model 445 CRT tester now this model here is from the 1960s and it's so it's very archaic and I got it a couple years ago, but I've never used it or found anything compatible to use it so it's little more than a You know a prop at this point Because I don't trust it to use it plus. It's not a very good model However, a few years down the road in the 1970s B&K did come up with a much better model This being the 467 Analyzer and tester and so this was one that I was fortunate enough to recently be able to purchase for less than a hundred dollars on eBay and It did not really come with any Tips or adapters it came with a couple but not not really anything helpful But what the good thing about this one is You can use it to test and in certain cases clean Repair and even rejuvenate Trinitron tubes which is confirmed that this model will do that if you build your own adapters so Again, I just got this in and it's not Really have much of anything done to it. So before I start to use it and Hook it up to a tube. We're gonna need to restore it And so we need to get inside of it first check out some of the hardware probably clean it a little bit and then we'll also reflow the solder on the entire board because again, we're talking about potentially over 40 years of Just time on this circuit board and then once we get it tested We'll we'll try to get some adapters put together and then we'll test it on a 25 230 tube which is just like the monitor over here over my shoulder again a sony pvm 25 30 I have a tube ready and we just need to make an adapter that'll work with again this 4 6 7 Let's go ahead now and we'll start our restoration process Here is the 4 6 7 picture tube restore and analyzer by BK precision And I'm just gonna take the top of this case off. It's in a handy Briefcase format, but this one is in very very rough condition Take a little bit more of a look at the outside here. It's heavy-duty quite Everything seems to look like it would function normally it was listed as functioning and We're gonna take it apart now and try to service it some because I guarantee you it's gonna need Some solder reflowed and some other components just checked out now These are the only adapters it came with were these three Which are pretty useless for me at this point and that means that I will be taking and making a Trinitron adapter and now let's go ahead and take this thing apart It's outside of its shell and I'm gonna turn it around so you can get an idea of what's inside of here It's very old ancient electronics going on so I'm guessing that to calibrate you must have had to use these Potentiometers right here most likely Some obvious things we've got a couple fuses right here They look to be good, but they can be easily tested Got a gigantic cap right here, and then one right next to it I'm assuming those are some kind of filter caps on the power supply, but I definitely don't want to short that out and You know shock myself. That's a pretty large capacitor, so be careful if you're ever working inside one of these things This could be just as dangerous as a CRT almost so I'm definitely not you know It's not plugged in so don't worry about anything like that, but let's look at some of the other areas It's good quite interesting up here. We've got a couple of Light bulbs, I'm guessing for something to you know tell us if it's working or not They don't appear to be blown, but it's just something to take into consideration light bulbs inside here Obviously we've got some wiring in there quite a bit and So what I'm gonna do is I want to really clean this I'm going to reflow solder on this entire board looks pretty good still, but that won't hurt This is from 1974, so here's our manufacturing date. I'll show that to you I was wondering when this was made So there we have Right here Made in 1974 The BK is out of its shell right now. We're gonna calibrate it before we do any major Attempts to repair or really test anything further are it should be calibrated Now there's a pretty simple process But you do have to use extreme caution because this machine does have a lot of voltage going in and coming out of it So again, it has to be out of the shell. It does need to be plugged in Now I don't have the testing adapter So I'm just gonna have to use it without an adapter so that I can show you how to do this and anyone Can do this so what we're concerned about is our heater voltage which is tracked on this gauge up here and So what I have it initially started at is between the four to seven range Which you might just leave it on that setting if you have one of these machines And I'm gonna need to click it to on to set so our power lights on and you can tell up here I had to jump up to where my heater voltage is set and this is Telling me what it thinks the heater voltage is reading to but that could be incorrect in order to Calibrate this what you need to do is you need to have a voltage meter I just have the standard voltmeter and to do this I need to put it over into volts and We're looking at AC voltage current So the heater voltage is again set to six point three and what I want to do is I want to test what my actual Reading is on pin one which is the heater voltage on here and we'll see If it's actually what it's saying it is on the screen so you need to find pin one on the pin out and You know tap that connect that to your positive lead and then just ground out The negative lead and you should get your reading on what your actual heater voltage is So mine has to be turned where my heater is turned all the way to the right to get it to six point three Pretty much. Maybe I get to six point five that way And so I back down a little bit But it sits just above the six point three line here on this auto tracking now Since I've got it set at that The way to adjust it is inside Let me turn it off real quick just in case Inside of here are a set of resistors basically potentiometers now this one on the right is labeled r16 So as you turn that left or right it will adjust Your reading on this meter up here. Alright, so that potentiometer r16 again It controls the actual reading on this set screen. So We've gone through now, and we've already set our major Output so we know that our heater point on here is actually outputting six point three volts and So to change our meter up here, we need to turn that r16 And as I turn it, let's say if we had a reading of you know Eight point four volts instead well we could turn it all the way to eight point four volts and calibrate it But we don't have that we have a much lower back down here to the six point three And so that's how you calibrate it is you just you get it set Based on an external voltage meter on the pen one and then a ground You can come in here and use the r16 After that to set your dial To read and match what it's actually outputting Now here we've got our analyzer, and it is set up because I finally made the little adapter And I have it hooked up to a 25 30 and there it is in the back of the Tube where the neckboard would normally be now I have the adapter that I've made Plugged in and we can test it out and our machine after we finally get done restoring it So this is the tube we're testing. It's from a parts monitor that was a 25 30 and I never was able to actually test the tube The boards were messed up and so was the shell to the point where it had all fallen apart And I'd like to test the tube now to see if it's still good and maybe can be used with another monitor This one's from 1989 So it's definitely plugged into the monitor Tube and then it's plugged into the wall And the first thing I'm going to do is go from off to set Our power indicator light came on here And you see we've got some movement on our Meters already, which is good Okay, so this first one we're going to the first thing we're going to do is we're going to set our heater Voltage which needs to be 6.3 volts the range here is 4 to 7 that it's set on and then I'm going to use this set HDR and I'm going to spin that slightly and As I spin it this dial will go up And you want to get it to that So there's that Next We're going to set our g-tube on this one This should be at 50 volts for this tube, which is right in the middle So that's set now we can move to set our cut-offs Which is each individual color And so if you read the manual, it's going to tell you to do one like interval and So what you just need to spin this to the right Until it goes to the very first dash above zero on here, so that's it the first interval or dash this one is There we go, and I believe that is the proper way To set this up and run tests Okay, so that's followed the instructions just to run a standard test. We should just be able to Turn this thing now over to test and it'll give us readings On our color gun and then I'll switch over to the actual tube so you can see it is lit up like it has a Current going into it. It's going to display something now There's nothing displayed. I don't know image or anything Because there's no power going into the rest of the monitor and there's no flyback even attached to the tube So let's go ahead now and we'll click over to test Now notice this one's jumping back and forth all these are actually this one's a little bit jumpy Way jumpy and a little bit jumpy too, but that's that's good. They're all over almost 1.7 and They're all in the good zone So that's that just means that our three colors are reading good, which I suspected on this tube Here we go three colors reading good in that green zone, but also higher on that So one more thing I can try is this life test and we'll see what happens and once it stabilizes This one doesn't need or appear to have any kind of shorts Or need any kind of rejuvenating or cleaning or balancing So hopefully we can get a chance to use that on another tube because that would just damage it if we were to run that now because This is a good tube Let me show you what the tube looks like as these tests are being done So you see how it's lit up in there? As if it were being used normally It's lit up Because the electron guns have a beam going through it just a test beam, but it is going through it So the tester seems to be working good and now it can really help me with some more stuff coming up I'll just have to make more adapters for each job So to turn it off. Let's just go all the way back to off You leave that But you might want to turn the rest of the knobs back to the left in case you're using it on a different monitor or tube So the homemade adapter, I'll show you It's not pretty But it was salvaged from a broken monitor board so You just match the pin out on that to the pin out coming out of here And this was salvaged from another adapter. That's why it's got Splices right there and those lead into the actual connection points that connect to the tube And that's how you safely make a new adapter That you can use for your tube so Unfortunately, you do have to have some parts to be able to make these but if you do have parts Then you're not limited on what you can actually test with this machine there's another restoration completed and I would definitely Recommend that if you do any kind of CRT work regularly or if you own multiple CRTs Especially pro video and broadcast video monitors. You might want to consider trying to find one of these b and k For six seven models. There's a couple of other models that are pretty good But until I actually get to use those I won't recommend them Now some things you need to look out for because this item can fluctuate extremely On price, so I think mine was again about $90 shipped But I saw go for three and four hundred dollars and most of that was due to the condition Some of them had booklets with them and just so you know you can get all the PDFs and Instructions and downloads you need from the internet for free. I've got links in the description of this video for those Documents in case you just want to access them and take a quick look at them And then the higher price ones also included a lot of adapters But again, if you're using them on Trinitron's like me none of those standard adapters were actually made for Trinitron's So they're not really useful unless you have a large collection of CRTs Now if you had to own a lot of arcade monitors and they're still CRTs then this would be something else that you could consider and then you could use some of those adapters that came with the machine standard But if you do get one you should consider going through and doing the restoration that we did today It's not overly technical But it is gonna give you a better performance on a machine again ours was from the mid 70s But hey, that's gonna do it for today's episode. Let me know what you thought with a comment below I'll definitely be using this rejuvenator and balance and cleaning machine in future episodes And hopefully we can find some that have some more Issues that I'm that actually show maybe bad on one of the readings and then we can do a Rejuvenation test and a clean in balance, but that'll have to wait for another video for now I just want to say thanks for watching and I'll see you guys next time with some more retro content