[Animats]

Artisanal vacuum tubes are a thing.[1] There's some interest in this from the vinyl record and overpriced tube amp crowd. There are even people who rebuild old CRTs for early TVs.[2] It's a lot of work.

[1] http://hackaday.com/2014/11/21/artisanal-vacuum-tubes-hackad... [2] http://www.earlytelevision.org/crt_rebuild.html

[mozumder]

Almost as cool as artisinal lightbulbs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmLp9Mn-5rg

[GirlsCanCode]

There's no vacuum in a Nixie Tube!

That being said, it would be nice if classic tubes of yesteryear can be remade efficiently. Especially for antique radio enthusiasts.

[makomk]

No theoretical reason why r couldn't be done, I think the more common guitar amp tubes are even in commercial production in China (and supposedly they've improved the robustness too). Bit of a niche market though.

glasslinger on YouTube has been experimenting with making some of the more unusual tubes too: https://youtu.be/BXAjspPLzRQ

[fake-name]

Uh, what?

Production involves pumping down to high vacuum, heating to degas, and then refilling with neon/argon at low pressure. Granted the production tube isn't at high vacuum, but it's not equivalent to ambient.

[erikpukinskis]

When they fill it with gas, wouldn't you say it is no longer a vacuum?

[3chelon]

This entire class of technology was universally known as "vacuum tubes" for a good reason.

[inlined]

Why do you say there's no vacuum? That's one of the steps in the videos.

[dekhn]

Technically, at the end of the process, the resulting tube's gas pressure is high enough to be called "low pressure" rather than, say, "rough", "medium", or "high vacuum".