>You need to develop a complete specification for the crystal (or the packaged oscillator) that you want and submit it to a crystal (or oscillator) manufacturer for review.
Well, I know I could request a quote on a crystal to spec. This is a daydream. I’m just curious what a crystal oscillator manufacturer would say, curious how much more predictable an oscillator could be if you let go the things I’d let go. I figure somewhere between $100 and $1000. OCXO’s give way to rubidium-stabilized oscillators, or at least certainly by around $2000 (depending on how lowbrow one likes one’s rubidium). But would this be the best $200 or $500 timekeeper? Since you were in the biz, I thought I’d ask.
And this daydream is a good 15 or 20 years old. Now that “chip scale atomic clocks” (“CSACs”) are just around the corner, smaller than a golf ball and cheaper than a nice putter, why, I guess the daydream’s about to be obsoleted anyway.
Have you looked into the technical specs for any of the programmable oscillators that are out there now? They were just coming in as I was going out, so I’m not too up on them but IIRC, they were originally doing something similar to what you are thinking about.
I don’t think your idea is a bad one but is it a good one? One real difficulty is getting someone like an oscillator design engineer interested; once he/she is interested, selling management on the idea of diverting equipment to develop the project is pretty iffy. MOST crystal/oscillator companies in the USA are small operations with very limited R & D facilities. The sad truth is that most of the of the crystals and oscillators that are sold by US companies originate off-shore. Product is shipped here, sold by a US company and quite often shipped right back to a user in China. Manufacturing crystals in the US is just about done for, or I’d still be working.
>Have you looked into the technical specs for any of the programmable oscillators that are out there now? They were just coming in as I was going out, so I’m not too up on them but IIRC, they were originally doing something similar to what you are thinking about.
I think programmable oscillators are prior art oscillators followed by programmable dividers. I just went and researched some, and they still have frequency stability specs like 25 to 100 ppm.
I’m sorry to hear the quartz crystal business has left the US. These are the sort of high tech businesses I’d have hoped we could hold on to. What are you doing now?
I’m semi-retired; I deliver medications to nursing homes on a part-time basis. Some crystal manufacturing still goes on in the US but typically on a very small scale; most of the people still involved are in specialized niche markets. However, there are a few (so far as I know) who are involved in manufacturing custom high-end oscillators—translate that as super expensive.