The New Hotness

Thinking of a 60 kHz crystal filter front end for the WWVB receiver brought a little bag of 32.768 kHz crystals to the surface; I figured I could use them as crash test dummies while a bag of 60 kHz crystals travels around the planet. Come to find out they don’t behave quite like crystals and a bit of investigation shows the little cans contain tuning fork resonators, not crystal slabs.

I had to see that, so I grabbed the base of one in a pin vise:

I don’t know the part number for those resonators, but it’s something like AT26, where the “26” means a cylindrical can 2 mm OD and 6 mm long, more or less.

Notching the can at the chuck with a triangular file, then wiggling the can with needle-nose pliers, eventually broke it off:

The other side:

A look through the microscope show they’re transparent, with laser trim scars on the ends:

The “holes” are unplated quartz areas, clear as the finest glass.

Not what I was expecting to see, at all!