I have a WP Gen  2+ tube 10160 I would like to get repaired. Searching through the archived revealed a place called Scientia Innovative Solutions but they are no longer around. Does anyone know who is able to do these repairs?

I'm looking for the company that was able to fix the emission point in this thread.

https://www.ar15.com/forums/armory/Laser-Rework-for-Emission-Points-It-works-/18-442595/

@rich20730

wjoutlaw You might check out the last handful of posts in the "broken pvs7 at apex" thread in this fourm. I got one with a EP and a few guys started talking about fixing them. Sounds like we have a member on hear that does it. In case you had missed that thread. Just wanted to pass that on.

Ident Marking in Rockwall Texas can fix this. They have taken care of this for me in the past.

Talk to Jason at Ident Marking.
They have the equipment and employee from the Litton factory and do good work on equipment specifically designed to repair emission points.

My guess is that many of the small spots on new tubes are actually repaired emission points.

And please report back here with some contact info and pricing for future reference since this thread gets archived. :-)

I didn't know Ident Marking fixed emission points, but I had an excellent experience with them for SBR engraving.

If you reach out to them let us know how it goes!

I messaged TXDX about his posting in this threadBroken PVS at APEX and he's agreed to take a look at it. Ident Marking has been recommended to me as well. First photo is with 100% dark no light coming through the objective lens. Second photo is just with the lens cap on.

Attached File
Attached File

Many thanks to @TXDX for the hard work with this tube. The resulting blem from the fix is larger than I'd like but it is usable. This may be going in a bug out bag and as a cheap beater/loaner. Or I may pass along the tube for cost to a friend. Still up in the air. Attached File
Attached File
Attached File

You know he has a different screen name now. That one is old old.

But this thread is pretty interesting.

Thanks for posting up the pics. Will copy here what I emailed you and add a bit more detail.

This EP was on the input side of the tube and was particularly stubborn. In my limited sample size, screen side EPs are the most common. Root cause is typically the aluminized backing layer behind the phosphor peeling or otherwise having a defect that then concentrates the field gradient. Input side EPs, be they on the photocathode or MCP input side, are a different animal and are caused by a microscopic and invisible defect that similarly concentrates the field gradient. On this tube, the aluminized layer and phosphor coating on the screen were burned away due to the EP. Could see thru the tube under illumination. Under magnification, I could see a tiny spec of "something" on the photocathode that was causing the EP. Never seen FOD inside a tube before though there's no reason why it couldn't happen. Potentially possible the debris got dislodged during the life of the tube and the tube left the factory with a clean bill of health.

The EP was contributing to a background glow that obscured fine detail in really low light conditions. Before being zapped, I could only see down to Group/Element 2/6 on the TS-4348 test set using the Gen 2 setting (approx. 7 line pairs per mm resolution) under low light conditions. After treatment, it improved to 3/3 (approx. 10lp/mm). A filmless L3 WP tube sees down to 3/6 (approx. 14lp/mm) tho on the somewhat dimmer Gen 3 setting. Not the most scientific method but at least there's something to back up the change. Comparing apples to apples, your tube has half the resolution of the L3 tube (34 SNR, 0.6 EBI) on the same Gen 3 low light setting. Not bad for Gen 2. Overall, to my eye, the low light view is far more pleasant and less distracting without the bright EP. The resultant blem, is unfortunately, much larger than I would have liked or would have hoped for. Had to zap the tube more than once to see any change. That didn't help keeping the blem to a minimum.

High light performance of the tube has been good and did not degrade. Its resolution is lower than a 64lp/mm tube. Detectable by eye with a side by side comparison. The Ekran datasheet for this tube seems to imply that the minimum resolution is 43lp/mm. On the high light setting, I can resolve down to 5/3 on the test set with the L3 tube (approx. 40lp/mm). This is the resolution of the entire optical system and will always be lower than the resolution of the tube. The 40lp/mm is in line with the theoretical resolution of a PVS-14, as a system. Your Gen 2 tube can resolve down to 4/6 (approx. 29lp/mm). With optical elements being identical, scaling the results against a 64lp/mm tube gives an approximation of relative resolution (more to it, not the best approximation). I'm getting about 45lp/mm for your tube, something that I'm inclined to believe.

One detail I have been unable to verify yet is whether or not your tube is autogated. I could not measure if it's autogated but the method used depends on the power supply being of the same type as used by American tubes, something that may not be true. In operation, the tube seems to be autogated, on two counts. The (very) high light resolution is not meaningfully degraded and is higher than the very high light resolution of a nongated Omni 4 tube. The Gen 2 photocathode also does not leave streaks when panning past bright lights, something I've only seen with a custom autogated Gen 2 tube. Inclined to say it may be gated.

@TXDX Thank you for that really detailed write up. I am curious as to if its autogated or not. My next project for this tube may just be a dedicated bug out bag/beater/loaner NV device.

interesting about reading a resolution off the ts test set - i never worked out a good way to get a resolution figure  from reading the groups/elements  , i have seen most russian tubes using the p43 phosphor output and that could be why yours is not streaking with lights as its a lot faster refresh rate than the p20 or p22 green types

looking at the higher light picture of the blem it looks like there is a good dark black spot where you fixed the ep. then the biggest part looks slightly transparent , did you laser it with the tube on or did it damage the outer part even with it switched off ?  you must have a pretty fine laser to fix these like this

Am I the only one who thinks the tube looked better before it was "fixed"?

It wasn't better. It might have looked better visually, since the EP was smaller than the resulting fix, but in a truly dark environment, the EP's glow brighter and take up more space and it sounds like this one was impacting the overall performance in dark environments.

The performance wasn't bad with the EP, so hopefully it is even better now.

Attached File


I am just curious as to the process around removing these. I would like to see how it is performed. I too was hoping this would come out like Rich's where the blem almost went completely away. I don't think anyone wants to eliminate a small EP and introduce a large blem, but in terms of usability, this tube should be more usable without an EP.

I agree that is should be a lot more useful with the blem than the EP point. I haven't gotten the tube back yet, but I've got all the parts in to build a dedicated loaner/beater unit. With this tube so far, I'm all in at $549 for a PVS-14.

Yes, the black spot is somewhat transparent. Can see bright lights thru it, except at the center. Tube was off during the "treatment" and it still was damaged. This tube had a piece of debris that was viisble on the photocathode and that was the source of the EP. Pretty severe cause, otherwise I would have been more optimistic about walking away with less damage. Laser alignment is definitely very critical. Laser is positionable with an optical stage that has micrometer XY adjustment. Mechanical alignment is performed at low power. There's still a lot of aspects of the "treatment" that are more art than science and I'm not a very good artist.

I've had other tubes come away with far less damage, tho all had screen side EPs. Part of it could just be unit to unit variation in terms of the extent of the EP and how much energy is required to "fix" the EP itself. Another factor could be the laser light going back thru the MCP and damaging the PC. The channels of the MCP are not parallel to the tube axis but are offset by a few degrees. Depending on how everything lines up, the channels in the MCP could preferentially cut off any light from reaching the PC or be aligned such that a decent bit of the light reaches the PC and introduces excess damage.

I am ecstatic that it was able to be "fixed". Only time will tell if that black spot is too distracting to use. My experience says it will be just fine and somewhat disappear with normal use in the wild. Blems ALWAYS look way worse when placed against a white background. At least it is not in zone one and it is off to the side. I already have a budget housing ready to go for it and am looking forward to putting it through it's paces.

The piece of debris on the tube is really weird, I think the guy that let that tube through the quality control inspection was just "phoning it in" that day. But for $280, I am not complaining.

I’m the friend that ended up buying the complete unit. I’ll be able to check it out tomorrow night.

I saw some photos from @The_Hammer when he was testing around his property and the blem doesn't seem as bad as it did around my place. I'm actually regretting selling this now.

That's why I asked if you were willing to sell the tube haha. Once the EP was gone, I liked the image through it more than I would have expected for a run of the mill Gen 2 tube. Definitely a good choice for a beginner starting out and also at a price point that if something bad happens, the suck will be way less than with a Photonis or ITT or L3 tube.

If it wasn’t for Outlaw I wouldn’t have been able to get in to NV for a good while. This is my first NV setup and so far I’m really impressed with it.

I was thinking the same thing. I built it with an absolute bare bones budget. I wanted to see how cheaply I could get it built but still reliable and functional. Using the PVS-7 objective lens was a novel approach and I'm glad I posed the question. The lens worked out better than expected and saved around $150 off the total cost. If @The_Hammer ever decides to upgrade the tube or the objective lens, I've got first dibs.

@wjoutlaw misspelled higgest bidder