"Tim Shoppa" wrote in message roups.com...
Are "overtone" crystals cut differently than "fundamental" crystals?
Or are they just specified differently?

In particular, say I took a garden-variety 20MHz fundamental
microprocessor crystal and instead used it at its fifth overtone,
trying to hit 100 MHz. The LC network is there to make sure that it's
on its fifth overtone. Will this "misuse" mean that the oscillator
will be harder to start up, less stable, more noisy, ???, than a
crystal oscillator made out of a real overtone crystal? I don't mind
if I "miss" 100 MHz by a several tens or hundreds of ppm, as long as
it's stable there.

If anyone knows of a place that ships off-the-shelf 100 MHz fifth or
seventh overtone crystals, I can avoid this whole exercise.... :-)

Tim.


Tim,

to get optimum performance one would grind the 100MHz 5.OT finer or
even polish it, and the thickness of the electrodes might be different
to get optimum Q.
But you should be ok by using a 20MHz fundamental in its 5th.

There are also manufacturers that make 100 in fundamental (up to about
200MHz), and many should have 100 in 5th as standard part...

Frank