All about Trigalight. Secret of the Swiss Tritia

Art & Technology
All about Trigalight. Secret of the Swiss Tritia
07/10/2015
“Well, where is your reactor?” – Most often with a fading in his voice, visitors of the MB-MicroTec factories, located near Bern, are asked. Technical director John Williams them immediately soothes: Naturally, there is no nuclear reactor in the vicinity of the Swiss capital.
Industrial tritium, radioactive isotope, obtained by enriching lithium, is acquired by special manufacturers, the largest of which are located in Canada. Natural tritium itself is a very rare and expensive element with a number of pleasant characteristics: weak beta radiation and a stable long luminescence. But the process of its production is not exclusive (it is in Russia). But what really is the know-how of the Swiss and makes the MB-Microtec leader in the Tritiyery backlight market – the own technology of manufacturing the microtubes of Trigalight, which can fit on the needle tip.
From this stage and the factory visits begins. Basic tubes from borosilicate glass are heated, and then pulled out on long machines. The process is a little resembling the manufacture of a spiral hair. As a result, the diameter decreases from 12 mm to 0.5 mm, and the length increases forty time. From the one-meter-meter blank it turns out 120 half-meter tubes, which are sent to the next room, on coloring. There on their inner surface according to its own MB-MicroTec technology, a solidofora powder is applied to a solid layer. Another factory technology is the ability to experiment with the color of the phosphor from the standard green to a rare white, and some copyright shades, such as Ice Blue, the company uses only in the clock of the TRASER’s own brand.
After drying, the tube with the phosphor is seal from one end, and the culmination of the operation begins – the injection of tritium begins. It looks very exciting. The tube mounted on the frame is slowly immersed in the container from which the white smoke flows. The smoke comes from the liquefied nitrogen, which is necessary so that the container is cooled before gas supply and more tritium fell into the tube. The radio active isotope itself is stored in a hermetic container, the norms of its flow rate are strictly regulated. Although the production process is fully safe, all the halls (including those where TRIGALIGHT is installed during TRASER clock) are equipped with radiation sensors.
Finally, the last stage remains: cutting the tubes with a laser to pieces of 1.3 mm long, testing and packaging in the pallets. Most of these operations are made by automatic manipulators with photocells, but some details can be done only manually – in the Swiss style. As, let’s say, the insert of the microcolb in the metal casing, so that the luminous “point” turned out. Why is it needed? For example, for the sight of the night vision of the Uzi automaton.
That’s almost all: trigalight is numbered, packed and ready to send. These elements are used in aviation and automotive devices, in service, and more recently – and in medicine. MB-MicroTec itself even opened a new Glencatec division, which creates research microinders with TRIGALIGHT.
And, of course, their share of these microdets receive hour producers, closer than all of which, literally in step accessibility, are their own brand TRASER, more than twenty years produced professional and army models with tritium illumination, and recently actively published on the wide market.
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