[time-nuts] What sort of oscillator is this?

Hal Murray hmurray at megapathdsl.net
Sun Sep 28 06:16:15 EDT 2014


drkirkby at kirkbymicrowave.co.uk said:
> Two people responded - one says a OCXO and the other an TCXO!!
> The warmup time is I think an hour, but clearly that is not the time for an
> oven to warm up.

An hour seems like a reasonable OCXO warm-up time to me.  You might get 
faster warm-up times, but you will probably pay for it someplace else.  Here 
is a graph:
  http://www.megapathdsl.net/~hmurray/time-nuts/Drift-ocxo3mhz-a.gif

Also, it probably depends upon how long it has been powered off.

See how much power the system draws when plugged in but turned off.  Most 
gear using OCXOs keep them powered up when the front panel switch says "off". 
 So 0 is a strong indication that you have a TCXO.  You can also unplug it 
for a couple of hours, then watch the power after you plug it in.  I'd expect 
a step decrease in power after the core is mostly warm.


> I find it odd that an instrument that probably cost $50,000 when new did not
> have a TCXO as standard,  and perhaps an oven as an option. 

Maybe most customers have a good lab source of 10 MHz and use an external 
clock.


-- 
These are my opinions.  I hate spam.





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