Chinese Tubes?

[Clinton Crawford]

I just bought a good used machine with a bad 60w tube, and need to replace it.

The last time I bought a tube, the low end were all glass, and only the high end had metal ends/mirror housings. Now it seems the low end has metal ends as well, but in a lot of them only the "business end" has a cooling jacket, photo attached.

I'm used to tubes with cooling jacket on both ends -- Is there a disadvantage to not having the "back end" water cooled, or are these tubes all right?

I'm grabbing a like-for-like swap for now to get the machine productive quickly, until I'm ready to go from this cheap 60W tube to an 80 or 100w RECI. I'm not looking for the highest end, but I'd also like to avoid buying something obviously bad.

Thanks!

[Dave Sheldrake]

The water cooled Full reflector ends were to reduce the chance of the glue coming apart on the tubes, most of the big tubes these days run at lower temperatures (under 23 degrees) and only require a heat sink to get rid of any residual heat

The air cooled ends are fine and most of the premium tubes run this way now

[Clinton Crawford]

Excellent. I'll not worry about having full cooling jackets.

Thank you for the assistance!