Old Steel case Diodes.

[Ohiogoldfever]

I’ve come across a fair bit of these steel cases diodes in some early 60’s era power supplies. Some are gold plated on the exterior but not all of them.

They are hard as the hammers of hell so I’ve not opened one yet.

What’s inside these old dudes? Any reason to collect these non-plated ones.

 

[snail]

Are sure they are steel cased, looks like a sintered tantalum core capacitor.

Most of the ones I used to find were brass cases with the core soldered in.

 

[Ohiogoldfever]

I suppose that could be. I assume steel cased because my nippers (that will cut basically anything) won’t even dent these when I try to cut on open.

Super tough body on them.

 

[Findm-Keepm]

Very well could be steel or Kovar cased diodes. Motorola, RCA, International Rectifier, Sarkes-Tarzian and others famously made metal cased diodes. The JAN (mil-spec) ones had gold plated bodies and leads. Sanken and Fujitsu made several in Japan as well - older 60s stereos had those.

Steel, silicon, the dopant, and copper is all one would expect in the commercial types. MIL PRF 19500 no longer requires a PM plating, so the gold plated ones are mostly relegated to history.

 

[butcher]

A meter could help identify it as a diode or capacitor.
If you can see a manufacturing logo, or at least numbers and or letters you can normally find the datasheets for the part.

 

[stella polaris]

Looks like a tantal capasitor more than a diod, to me.
If so it is not the casing thats hard. It is the tantalium slug inside. Put in a tantal scrap pile

 

[Alondro]

Very well could be steel or Kovar cased diodes. Motorola, RCA, International Rectifier, Sarkes-Tarzian and others famously made metal cased diodes. The JAN (mil-spec) ones had gold plated bodies and leads. Sanken and Fujitsu made several in Japan as well - older 60s stereos had those.

Steel, silicon, the dopant, and copper is all one would expect in the commercial types. MIL PRF 19500 no longer requires a PM plating, so the gold plated ones are mostly relegated to history.

I'm getting quite a pile of the little cylindrical Shottky diodes now. Some of those have valuable metals used as contacts between the electrode and the silicon wafer: molybdenum, platinum, chromium or tungsten, and Pt and Pd silicides). Also have 5 pounds of the big rectangular diodes and transistors with the chunk of copper.