[time-nuts] Re: “Normal” vital statistics for a PRS10 rubidium

[Bob Camp]

Hi

The typical answer for any of the small Rb’s is that things go from “ok” to “not so great” in 
a fairly short amount of time. You really can’t look at this or that magic number and guess
that you have another 5 years of life. 

Next up is the gotcha that most of these parts have various running changes made. Those
are rarely tied to changes in the marking of the parts. What might be a “normal” reading for
parts made with change A are not “normal” for change B parts. 

By far the best approach is to monitor what you can see. If it’s a flat line, things are probably
ok. If it starts taking a dive, shop for a spare. This all applies to a number of other standards
out there. It is not unique to Rb’s.

Heat sinking wise, the Rb’s have internal heaters. Heatsink them heavily and those heaters
work harder. You might increase the life of the regulators and decrease the life of the heaters. 
Best guess is that MTBF wise, the heaters are the bigger issue. 

All that said, my inventory of PRS-10’s have not been the “best of the best” in terms of living
a long life. There is no way to know how long this or that sample of parts lived in the field.
There’s also no way to know how it was treated both in the field and during reclamation. 
Comparing stuff this way is very far from a precision approach …..

Bob

> On Sep 11, 2023, at 12:54 PM, Ed Marciniak via time-nuts <time-nuts at lists.febo.com> wrote:
> 
> What might one expect for lamp and photocell outputs on a healthy unit configured with analog outputs for both?
> 
> What are usual cutoffs at which malfunction/loss of lock would be expected?
> 
> Is there a rough correlation to remaining life?
> 
> 
> And finally, in addition to the baseplate, the panel opposite the output connect has three terminal regulators attached to it. If one has the luxury of heat sinking both faces would any positive effects be expected on lifetime?
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