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Do they make a noise? I like to imagine that they start up with an electrical fizz 
***Official Electronics Thread of Officialness (it starts off with lots of Nixie Tube Clock goodness
- Thread starter Aod
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Caporegime
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- 1 Mar 2008
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M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-MONSTER POST!
many people get more than 30 years out of a set of tubes, especially the mercury-enhanced ones, and even more so if the clocks have a slot-machine-routine like mine does.
It's not really the same though
There are Nixie-Clock apps... they're pretty poor though
It's very hard to accurately capture the true feel of the nixies with a Camera.
As for your Mesh casing suggestion? i LOVE it. almost definitely going to go for mesh now
Good stuff. feel free to ask if you need any advice
The Kit Came from http://www.pvelectronics.co.uk and was of outstanding quality. i wouldn't hesitate in using any of their products in the future.
Tubes with solid Pins can't be soldered directly, the pins conduct too much heat and crack the glass, ruining the tube. because of that, solid-pinned-tubes need to be used in conjunction with either their exceedingly rare original sockets, or you need to create the sockets yourself.
Thin-wire tubes are much more convenient because they can simply be soldered in place by hand without any form of fancy mounting.
Phwoar, that's a beast matey. bet you're proud as hell of it though! it's a true beaut
Nope, the Tubes stay completely cold. they're all room temerature on mine. infact, the only things on the whole board that get warm are the IRF640 and the 220uH inductor.
total materials price was £60 for mine, but Tubes are much more expensive now. including min. wage. for labour costs it would come to ~£128.20
Actually, I was completely sober, albeit a bit tired. i'm just a bit rusty and the solder areas are really really small!
Look in my post No. 3, the first link i posted is a complete set of six Russian IN-18 tubes (HUGE!) and the second is a kit that uses them. there are more sets of IN-18's out there on ebay too.
For under £100 you'd be looking at something quite a bit more bespoke. the IN-8's are reasonably sized tubes and can be had affordably, not quite as impressive as the IN-18s though.
If you want, you could take a chance and try out some other tubes, like the ITT or Raytheon Tubes i linked to, if you don't like/can't use them you can almost certainly sell them.
There are a fair few complete kits available, but most of them use the IN-14 nixies, which are completely fine, albeit a little small
The ever-slightest electrical humming comes from the device due to the SMPS and the tone changes with digit changes. can't hear it from more than about 6 inches though
Anyone considering building a big Nixie Kit will appreciate this AWESOME find on ebay:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/super-nix...pt=Vintage_Electronics_R2&hash=item336a14a54e you're all welcome!
My Tubes are rated for a 10,000 hour minimum lifespan as long as the drive voltage doesn't exceed 200V.
many people get more than 30 years out of a set of tubes, especially the mercury-enhanced ones, and even more so if the clocks have a slot-machine-routine like mine does.
It's not really the same though
There are Nixie-Clock apps... they're pretty poor though
It's very hard to accurately capture the true feel of the nixies with a Camera.
As for your Mesh casing suggestion? i LOVE it. almost definitely going to go for mesh now
Good stuff. feel free to ask if you need any advice
The Kit Came from http://www.pvelectronics.co.uk and was of outstanding quality. i wouldn't hesitate in using any of their products in the future.
Tubes with solid Pins can't be soldered directly, the pins conduct too much heat and crack the glass, ruining the tube. because of that, solid-pinned-tubes need to be used in conjunction with either their exceedingly rare original sockets, or you need to create the sockets yourself.
Thin-wire tubes are much more convenient because they can simply be soldered in place by hand without any form of fancy mounting.
Phwoar, that's a beast matey. bet you're proud as hell of it though!
it's a true beaut
That looks nice, do the tubes get very hot? If not then I'd be tempted to go for some sort of wooden enclosure in order to pull off the retro look.
Nope, the Tubes stay completely cold. they're all room temerature on mine. infact, the only things on the whole board that get warm are the IRF640 and the 220uH inductor.
total materials price was £60 for mine, but Tubes are much more expensive now. including min. wage. for labour costs it would come to ~£128.20
You can tell you were back from on the lash with soldering like that
Actually, I was completely sober, albeit a bit tired. i'm just a bit rusty and the solder areas are really really small!
Look in my post No. 3, the first link i posted is a complete set of six Russian IN-18 tubes (HUGE!) and the second is a kit that uses them. there are more sets of IN-18's out there on ebay too.
For under £100 you'd be looking at something quite a bit more bespoke. the IN-8's are reasonably sized tubes and can be had affordably, not quite as impressive as the IN-18s though.
If you want, you could take a chance and try out some other tubes, like the ITT or Raytheon Tubes i linked to, if you don't like/can't use them you can almost certainly sell them.
There are a fair few complete kits available, but most of them use the IN-14 nixies, which are completely fine, albeit a little small
Do they make a noise? I like to imagine that they start up with an electrical fizz
The ever-slightest electrical humming comes from the device due to the SMPS and the tone changes with digit changes. can't hear it from more than about 6 inches though
Anyone considering building a big Nixie Kit will appreciate this AWESOME find on ebay:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/super-nix...pt=Vintage_Electronics_R2&hash=item336a14a54e you're all welcome!
Last edited:
Soldato
Tubes with solid Pins can't be soldered directly, the pins conduct too much heat and crack the glass, ruining the tube. because of that, solid-pinned-tubes need to be used in conjunction with either their exceedingly rare original sockets, or you need to create the sockets yourself.
Thin-wire tubes are much more convenient because they can simply be soldered in place by hand without any form of fancy mounting.
You can buy single pin sockets that solder on to a PCB and will take the pins
You can buy single pin sockets that solder on to a PCB and will take the pins
Correct, this is currently the best method. still much more of a faff than just soldering the tubes on directly
Soldato
Cool toy!
Sounds like you could get more life by rotating the tubes once in awhile, if it isn't too much bother. Maybe once a week put the one from Slot 1 into Slot 2, 2 to 3, 6 to 1, etc. That zero on the far left is going to be lit up for 20 hours a day.
Sounds like you could get more life by rotating the tubes once in awhile, if it isn't too much bother. Maybe once a week put the one from Slot 1 into Slot 2, 2 to 3, 6 to 1, etc. That zero on the far left is going to be lit up for 20 hours a day.
Soldato
That is very funky 
The tubes are soldered in place and they're a MASSIVE pain to solder, so swapping them round isn't practical unfortunately, as that's a good plan.
Currently, every 10 minutes the clock cycles all the tubes through all their digits for 10 seconds to prevent burn in which should be sufficient
interestingly enough, with Nixies, the digits that aren't used are the ones that degrade in static displays, as metal emissions deposit on the inactive digits, covering them up and stopping them from functioning.
That is very funky
Thanks!
Soldato
This guy looks to be quite the expert:
http://www.tube-tester.com/sites/nixie/different/cathode poisoning/cathode-poisoning.htm
http://www.tube-tester.com/sites/nixie/different/cathode poisoning/cathode-poisoning.htm
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That's awesome... I'm getting one of them
This guy looks to be quite the expert:
http://www.tube-tester.com/sites/nixie/different/cathode poisoning/cathode-poisoning.htm
he also appears to sell kits!
Soldato
Of course, you have to ask how much extra you're paying for a kit over buying parts separately. If somebody put together a basket on Rapid it would be just as easy to buy... main disadvantage being the lack of a printed PCB, so you'd either be making your own or using perfboard.
it wouldn't work out any cheaper actually. the kits are remarkably good value.
for one thing, the wiring for the clocks (even if you use multiplexing instead of direct drive) is unpleasantly complicated. doing it in perfboard (i call it Veroboard still) is possible but very challenging.
Indeed, and i suspect that their quality is unparalleled. unfortunately, so is their price
Soldato
Sa-weet! Nice job there dude that looks great
Soldato
Actually veroboard is different, with the copper tracks travelling lengthways:
And on perfboard there is simply a single copper pad around each hole:
Which you use depends on how good you are at layouts, if somebody else has taken the time to make a layout for that particular circuit etc.
it wouldn't work out any cheaper actually. the kits are remarkably good value.
for one thing, the wiring for the clocks (even if you use multiplexing instead of direct drive) is unpleasantly complicated. doing it in perfboard (i call it Veroboard still) is possible but very challenging.
Indeed, and i suspect that their quality is unparalleled. unfortunately, so is their price
yeah £155 is a bit steep for the kits but I'll bet they work well!
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OMG I want me one of these! Time to dust off the old soldering iron!