I knew that when the signal generator arrived on the bench, it would not be safe to just plug it in and ‘suck it and see’. There was a very good chance that some components had failed with old age and this could result in some fireworks and a severely damaged unit if power was applied.
Unfortunately I have little experience in restoring old valve-based equipment. However, I was able to call on the expert advice of David 2E0DYN who is quite the boffin on valve equipment in general and even better, he has recently renovated his own TF995A. My unit was in safe hands!
We set to work, removing the six bolts in the front face which allowed us to slide out the main chassis from the case. The power supply is built in to the bottom of the case and is connected to the chassis by a six-pin plug.
One interesting aspect of this renovation is that unlike a lot of modern equipment, the TF995A is clearly designed to be disassembled for servicing and repair. We had access to the original Marconi instruction/service manual which allowed us to compile a list of components that would need replacement.
A decision was made at the outset – old capacitor cans such as these would be replaced with modern parts. This would not be a ‘historical’ restoration trying to return it to some sort of factory finish, but a repair with the intention of putting this unit back in to service to do useful work and add more to its life story.
David’s eagle eyes spotted some failed capacitors deep within the mains filter requiring the disassembly of the filter.
There was also work to be done underneath the power supply section. This was removed from the case and inspected for components needing replacement, as well as planning the routing of replacement cabling.
Finally, it would be necessary to strip down part of the front panel. This would permit the removal of a sub-assembly attached to the back face of the panel. Sandwiched in between this sub-assembly and panel were more components needing attention.
After a few hours of work, we had a list of components to buy and jobs to be done. The next post will show the work being done.