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Old 22nd Feb 2023, 11:22 pm   #41
jamesperrett
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Default Re: Who worked at a radio/TV factory?

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My father ran a Radio and TV shop in Haslemere, Surrey, called Astra Radio. I used to go there every Saturday as a boy. As he and his partner had set it up just after the war, the place was full of valve TV's and radio's both whole and in bits. I loved it.
I remember Astra Radio - didn't they have a big advertising sign on the end of the building? I remember that there were two shops connected by a passage that ran behind another shop. In the late 70s I was a Saturday assistant working just down the road at Ralph Coombes.
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Old 23rd Feb 2023, 9:45 am   #42
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Default Re: Who worked at a radio/TV factory?

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Originally Posted by mpegjohn View Post
My father ran a Radio and TV shop in Haslemere, Surrey, called Astra Radio. I used to go there every Saturday as a boy. As he and his partner had set it up just after the war, the place was full of valve TV's and radio's both whole and in bits. I loved it.
I remember Astra Radio - didn't they have a big advertising sign on the end of the building? I remember that there were two shops connected by a passage that ran behind another shop. In the late 70s I was a Saturday assistant working just down the road at Ralph Coombes.
Yes that is right. It was an odd setup, the TV shop and the radio shop connected by that small passage at the rear. In between Boxalls the barber, who was my Uncle. Goodness knows how all that came about.
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Old 23rd Feb 2023, 5:36 pm   #43
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Noteing that Dry Joint worked at Thorn EMI, I dont see anymore references to Thorn, considering the number of staff they had. Are they on a "non disclosure" thingy. ? After NEI closed the factory in Bradford, the management in London moved to Boreham wood, while the lab moved to Hey Street, just behind Bradford Uni. We set up a lab to test products to safety standard BS415. We were just about to place our application to BSI when the whole "goal posts" were not only changed, but the entire game. Thus meaning we could only "pre test" and advise customers of compliance or not as the case may be. It was only a matter of a few months that "head office" decided that Boreham wood had enough space to accommodate the test lab.
So Bradford was closed down and relocated to B/W. The lab also hired 3 Ex Thorn design employees, no names.. but they were very able, and the four of us made a good team. NEI was now importing components for "kitting" TV's to be made in Romania, Slovenia and Turkey. With the design lab making the "first" inter web tv using a ACORN PC... "Never marketed". We also re designed the CE25/28 to be more reliable, after another company did the original design.
Due to the sad death of our "leader", the company lost its way and the "bean counters" had a field day, closing most things down. I relocated to Maplins, which was part of a Conglomerate inc Nikkai, NEI, Maplins + others. Eventually I joined Akura as Tech manager till my retirement 10 years ago. Was an eventful life for a "jobbing repair person from West yorks.
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Last edited by Wendymott; 23rd Feb 2023 at 5:44 pm. Reason: Typo
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Old 23rd Feb 2023, 6:45 pm   #44
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Default Re: Who worked at a radio/TV factory?

After I had qualified I left the TV rental place I worked for as I was offered double the wages by an industrial electronics firm who were contracted to a lot of the engineering firms locally, they fitted electronic controls and switchgear replacing the old electro-mechanical equipment. The machine control panels consisted of loads of logic gates I think these days it wouldn't even be hardware, probably no more than a programme!
The boss asked one day if I would repair his TV as he knew of my previous employment. He brought it in the following day it was a Thorn 8800 or 98 something of that ilk.
The other guys couldn't believe how "thrown together" it was "wiring unsecured just lobbed on the bottom of the cabinet" etc.. I couldn't believe that they hadn't seen inside a telly! We came to the conclusion that if TV sets were made to the same standard as our stuff none would be able to afford one. Even self tapping screws were seen as a "bodge"! Everything should held in place with nuts and bolts...
I earned very good money and had a new Cortina estate car but after a year I left and started working for myself fixing crappy ole tellies! Much happier days!
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Old 23rd Feb 2023, 7:00 pm   #45
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Default Re: Who worked at a radio/TV factory?

I think people who fix 'modern' teles are, and have to be a special breed, able to deal with problem customers and possessing the knowledge and tenacity to fix teles that often have strange or intermittent faults.
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Old 23rd Feb 2023, 8:15 pm   #46
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Default Re: Who worked at a radio/TV factory?

I could write a book about Douglas Electronics at Louth. A lot of it would seem unbelievable. Perhaps one for the future.
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Old 23rd Feb 2023, 10:44 pm   #47
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Default Re: Who worked at a radio/TV factory?

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I think people who fix 'modern' teles are, and have to be a special breed, able to deal with problem customers and possessing the knowledge and tenacity to fix teles that often have strange or intermittent faults.

Not so much. lt's either the power board or main board neither of which can be repaired
New parts are either too expensive or NLA so a quick internet search for a second hand part might save the set from the tip.

Otherwise, it's new backlights

lf you can get the back off the TV and get the screen out without it breaking. Suction cups help.
I can just about do 55" anything above that, forget it
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Old 24th Feb 2023, 12:56 am   #48
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In the 1980's one of my neighbours was working for Ferguson at the time they were acquired by Thomson. He mentioned that, to save costs in the manufacture of the small b/w TVs they were making, the assemblers were not supposed to bother aligning them accurately: however, as the operatives had been doing it for years, they were still able to do it without much time penalty out if pride for a job well done.

He also gave me a boxed Airfix electronic train set controller (the type where you fitted a unit in the engine and energised the track with AC) that they had been making for Airfix. Airfix had gone bust and they had a stock of Airfix-branded stuff that hadn't been collected (or paid for) and didn't know what to do with. They didn't have any design info as it wasn't needed for manufacture. I thought the DIN plugs and curly leaded hand-held controllers might be useful but eventually gave it to my children to play with (knobs to turn, switches to flick), and it ended up in the electronics waste container at the local tip.

Last edited by emeritus; 24th Feb 2023 at 12:59 am. Reason: typos
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Old 24th Feb 2023, 8:48 am   #49
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Default Re: Who worked at a radio/TV factory?

In my final year at uni (1979), I applied for jobs with Thorn Consumer Electronics (Ferguson), Pye Telecommunications, the BBC and British Rail. I was interviewed by all and offered jobs.

As part of the process, I visited and was shown around Thorn's factories at Enfield, Gosport and Newhaven for interviews, plus a peek at the development of their new TX chassis range (in Enfield). All very interesting and tempting.

In the end, I'm glad I opted for British Rail (signalling electronic systems) - until I retired - look what's happened to all of the others!
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Old 25th Feb 2023, 2:18 pm   #50
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Default Re: Who worked at a radio/TV factory?

One of my last major jobs for Akura was a trip to Shenzhen in China, to approve a DVD/TV combi for a certain well known catalog company. We had 6 weeks from plastic prototype to container. They all seemed to know what they were doing. From the cabinet moulders to the TV Main pcb manufacturers. I brought back a couple of working samples on the friday night. In the UK, this would have taken months. The main pcb would drive LCD screens from 10" to 40", ANY menu you could think of. I went to the software lab at Hi Keen. A dozen engineers, all with different specs for different customers worldwide. Its sad to say, thats why the UK TV industry died.
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Old 25th Feb 2023, 2:30 pm   #51
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Default Re: Who worked at a radio/TV factory?

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One of my last major jobs for Akura was a trip to Shenzhen in China, to approve a DVD/TV combi for a certain well known catalog company. We had 6 weeks from plastic prototype to container. They all seemed to know what they were doing. From the cabinet moulders to the TV Main pcb manufacturers. I brought back a couple of working samples on the friday night. In the UK, this would have taken months. The main pcb would drive LCD screens from 10" to 40", ANY menu you could think of. I went to the software lab at Hi Keen. A dozen engineers, all with different specs for different customers worldwide. Its sad to say, thats why the UK TV industry died.
Interesting story. Re the loss of the UK Radio/TV industry, people in the industry laughed at the plasticky quality of Japanese and Hong Kong imports, totally not seeing that the world was changing. The pocket transistor radio was a huge fashion item and people were happy to pay less for a modern, 'pop' looking item that did the job, tinniness accepted, wooden cabinet not needed. Meanwhile we were still bolting strong sheet steel chassis and components together with BA bolts and spring washers; 'quality'.
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Old 25th Feb 2023, 2:50 pm   #52
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Default Re: Who worked at a radio/TV factory?

Did the Japanese transistors suffer from the tin whisker problem that's killed my little Murphy pocket portable?

Then again, I suppose that plastic decay may well cause the cases to fragment, apparently it's already a problem in museums.

Much the same as woodworm in plywood cabinets.
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Old 25th Feb 2023, 4:45 pm   #53
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Dr Strangelove. The plastic thing is or can be U/V light. It affects things like grey soil pipes, my hanging weights of my window blinds, I suppose its a case of..... is it ok NOW, not 20 years down the line. As for the Tin Whisker problem, didnt that go when "proper" transistors came into being ?
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Old 25th Feb 2023, 6:44 pm   #54
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Default Re: Who worked at a radio/TV factory?

Quote:
Originally Posted by lightning View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by stevehertz View Post
I think people who fix 'modern' teles are, and have to be a special breed, able to deal with problem customers and possessing the knowledge and tenacity to fix teles that often have strange or intermittent faults.

Not so much. lt's either the power board or main board neither of which can be repaired
New parts are either too expensive or NLA so a quick internet search for a second hand part might save the set from the tip.

Otherwise, it's new backlights

lf you can get the back off the TV and get the screen out without it breaking. Suction cups help.
I can just about do 55" anything above that, forget it
'Modern' teles was written in inverted commas for a reason, to differentiate it from (obviously) vintage teles, but also truly modern LCD teles and the like. We're talking about the first colour sets, dual standard sets and so on. The problems and faults with those sets is well documented and I also have a friend who worked on them and spent many an hour describing their faults to me.
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Old 25th Feb 2023, 7:42 pm   #55
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Default Re: Who worked at a radio/TV factory?

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Dr Strangelove. The plastic thing is or can be U/V light. It affects things like grey soil pipes, my hanging weights of my window blinds, I suppose its a case of..... is it ok NOW, not 20 years down the line. As for the Tin Whisker problem, didnt that go when "proper" transistors came into being ?
There seems to be a few varieties of plastic degradation.

Plasticiser migration is amusing when you find that all the grommets in a plastic tray have welded themselves to the polystyrene.

Polystyrene thermal insulation has an interesting effect on twin & earth.

Other plastics have decomposition products such as HCl (hydrochloric acid).

Apparently some plastic dolls from early in the last century are very prone to this sort of thing to the distress of those in charge of museums.

And the excitement of decomposed nitrate film can be imagined.

A cabinet material that appears to be stable is bakelite.

Which is good to know.

I wondered if anyone had encountered the tin whisker problem in radios from the Far East dating from the 1950s/early 1960s.
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Old 25th Feb 2023, 8:15 pm   #56
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Default Re: Who worked at a radio/TV factory?

I've worked in many factories (and places that make stuff) over my entire career. But non actually made radios or TVs, so I hope I'm not too OT. But I have worked with radios from an early career.

Had some early, bad experience with a Motorola radio / cassette. There were two versions, a MW / LW set, and another that added FM. The FM was an add on board, and used rivets rather than plate through holes to link the tracks on each side of the board. Not compatible with the solder and almost all of the FM versions failed within months!

Also had a control unit (used in a product made by a company I worked for) that had a problem where the plating on the legs of the crystal was incompatible with the solder. It was so common that I used to earn pints at my local pub by taking a gas soldering iron and solder sucker and fixing them.

I also got offered a job with a company, where they had experienced so many issues with stuff like tin whiskers, dendritic growth on PCBs because of humidity and flux residues, MLCC cracking because of poor PCB processing, (and many, many others) that they actually have a team audting their suppliers designs and processes. I didn't take it simply because they moved the teams location. I did work with them though, and saw how hard they had to work to get some suppliers to understand the issues that we experience on a regular basis.

I think the worst, though, was a company making quite specific test equipment where my job was to build the stuff. My title was production team leader, but it meant me building stuff (there was no team). The design of the test equipment was way more flaky than the stuff it was testing. I actually had a few (maybe 75%) of the units I built, let out smoke. Usually as a result of stupid stuff like changing the design to increase the voltage range, or current rating without actually testing the new design before selling to the customer. I left rather quickly. At one point they had me lifting the leg of an SMD IC, and inserting a zener diode between the lifted leg and the PCB.

These days, it seems to me that much more of the probelm is software / firmware written by children. By that, I mean really keen people with no experience, employed by people with no idea or experience. I could give hundreds more examples like above. Latest example is a battery backup unit that works OK, except that if connected to a load during a power failure, goes to an error state when mains returns. Disconnecting the load and immediately reconnecting and it is a happy bunny again. If there's no load during the power failure it recovers fine. Doh!
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Old 26th Feb 2023, 12:57 pm   #57
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Left school in 1973 and got a job at Thorn electronics at the Hainault essex factory. There i was put through six weeks of practical school including soldering before i was let loose sitting at a bench with one of the female radio testers and repairers , there were many, most of the lines were staffed by women , it was almost one big family plenty of chit chat and daily gossip and larks, overseen by an ex polish WW2 pilot and his hench woman that patrolled the factory floor looking for production problems and misbehaver,s LOL.
The radios were labeled Ferguson and the record decks (record changers) / stereo grams BRC from memory. I think the record changers were a cheap Garrard, not top quality but affordable to people.
Radio alignment was done by either the women or some of the young lads, the alignment tv screen was a kind of trace, when the if cans were tweaked and the ferrite rod coils adjusted and waxed into position and tested by a paxolin shaft wand , a brass coil at one end and i think a piece of ferrite at the other , when the trace on the screen was in target it was coil waxing time and also a few drops on the coloured if can adjusters. The same procedure was the same for the stereo gram chassis,s .
The stereogram chassis were installed in a white plastic frame that was then installed into the wooden stereo gram.
I think the pcb,s were populated by machine but maybe the women on the line also, cant remember, they passed slowly on an automated line over the solder flow bath and then onto an automatic fault finder tester machine called the routiner, one person sat at the machine filling out pass cards or fails by looking at a kind of bingo ball numbers readout and ticking the fail number boxes. The fails were taken off the line and put on a trolley for the repairers in the insulated cabins. From memory a lot of transistors failed . I finally ended up testing record changers and the gram chassis quite boring.
The machine shop there was run by a great chap who i only knew as Dave, who had part of a finger missing due to a run in with a milling cutter ! .
They introduced there the Quadrophonic tuner as my memory goes it was quite complex and i dont think it sold well .
TV power supply chassis were assembled and tested there , one of many pranks was to charge up the caps and stick a screw driver across the terminals , it could be heard right across the factory floor and usually attracted the attention of the dreaded floor boss.
Some of the speakers that were produced were cheap and cheerful made from chipboard core , some were delivered damaged and were sold off to employees , i think there was always something being sold to staff.
I also tested the record changers for wow and flutter in a sound proofed cabin , boring to say the least but we had some laughs, again there were some real characters working there.
The factory also had its own R&D room and the young lads who worked in there were truly on a different level, designing test equipment and wot not.
The company had they're own buses that would collect the workers and drop off at end of day, they were also used for day out beanos from memory, I truly lament those days now, there were even a couple of medallion men there replete with long hair, hairy chests and the old tash LOL
Ah the early 70s, as for christmas time and the carry-ons , not saying !!!.
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Old 26th Feb 2023, 1:23 pm   #58
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Default Re: Who worked at a radio/TV factory?

Nice to hear from you Malcom. I worked at Thorn EMI Electronics at Rugeley from 71 to 91. Although the company did not manufacture domestic products (it made factory automation and Admiralty equipment), we had a staff sales shop that sold all Thorn EMI products by Ferguson, Ultra, HMV, Goodmans and others. I may even have bought or handled a product worked on by yourself! Happy days, and ones that I often recall.
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Old 26th Feb 2023, 1:52 pm   #59
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Default Re: Who worked at a radio/TV factory?

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In the 1980's one of my neighbours was working for Ferguson at the time they were acquired by Thomson. He mentioned that, to save costs in the manufacture of the small b/w TVs they were making, the assemblers were not supposed to bother aligning them accurately: however, as the operatives had been doing it for years, they were still able to do it without much time penalty out if pride for a job well done.

He also gave me a boxed Airfix electronic train set controller (the type where you fitted a unit in the engine and energised the track with AC) that they had been making for Airfix. Airfix had gone bust and they had a stock of Airfix-branded stuff that hadn't been collected (or paid for) and didn't know what to do with. They didn't have any design info as it wasn't needed for manufacture. I thought the DIN plugs and curly leaded hand-held controllers might be useful but eventually gave it to my children to play with (knobs to turn, switches to flick), and it ended up in the electronics waste container at the local tip.
Later on Humbrol bought up the Airfix brand, but only kept the self assembly model kits in production, dropping all the other product ranges.

I assume the creditors didn't consider it worth it to collect & sell off the subcontracted equipment.
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Old 26th Feb 2023, 2:03 pm   #60
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Thanks Steve , i thought i was alone out there !.
This spurred me onto looking into the Quadrophonic player , and indeed it did die as a concept in the 70s as i remember it had problems but i wasnt involved with it and i think it was odd ball , most people only saw / heard stereo.
I defiantly do remember it turning up at the Hainault factory though.
Working there was the sharp end of the wedge it was very repetitive work in a noisy cigarette smoke atmosphere. I really would like to know where all those other people are i worked with ?.
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