Just wondering if any one has actually depressurized a Xenon short arc tube to turn it into a safe to handle display tube, and how you did it safely, now I have another crazy idea, unless someone knows a safer or easier way to do this, how about cooling the lamp with liquid nitrogen and in effect allowing it to freeze the xenon gas since the boiling point of nitrogen is -195°C and xenon freezes at -111°C, so the xenon would be frozen and the tube would be at zero PSI, when a diamond drill puts a small hole in the fill tube allowing the xenon gas to escape as the tube warms and it starts to boil off at -108°C...

Assuming the lamp would not blow up from thermal shock before it cooled to -111C

Assuming the lamp would not blow up from thermal shock before it cooled to -111C

I was just thinking about that, but I figure if it goes in the freezer to -30°C and then alcohol at the same temp and add some dry ice to the mix to drop it to about -80°C and then drop it with a rope into the nitrogen allowing it to gradually cool in stages the thermal shock shouldn't be to bad, and if it's tied to to rope I can stand back several feet should anything not go as planned I'll be ok..

Quartz can withstand being thrown into the water while red hot, I tested it several times, talk to Rigo, he has practice in degassing XBO lamp.

Assuming the lamp would not blow up from thermal shock before it cooled to -111C

quartz is quite resistant to thermal shock. just fill a tub with some alcohol and then drop in some dry ice or LN2. that should hopefully be enough to lower the internal pressure to allow you to depressurize the lamp.