About me

I love old things. Old cars, houses, electronics. I'm fascinated that these things can outlive their makers for tens, hundreds of years and still serve their original purpose.
This is the idea that drives me forward - I want to make pieces of electronics that people will cherish a long time after I'm gone!

My mission

“Bring Nixie tubes back to life”

(Hi)story

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1

2011

Discovered Nixie tubes

I discovered nixie tubes accidentally while browsing the internet.

December - 2011

I ordered my first nixie tubes from eBay, small russian tubes IN-14, this was actually my first physical encounter with vacuum tubes.

2

2012

First prototype

I ordered my first nixie tubes from eBay, small russian tubes IN-14, this was actually my first physical encounter with vacuum tubes.

February 2012

First attempt to make tubes.

I need tubes bigger than the tiny IN-14. However, buying six pieces of Z566M or similar means spending around $250. That's quite a lot!
Looking at the simple glass tube and metal structure inside, I get the idea of making nixie tubes myself. I though I'd just find a book with details on how nixie tubes are made. It turned out I was too naïve - information about nixie tube manufacture is pretty scarce.
I don't give up and after some time, I manage to collect basic information and think about making them public. It is a difficult decision, because I naturally wanted to protect my know-how, but I eventually started a blog about my struggles of making nixies at home.

March 2012

Secrets of glass-to-metal seals

A crucial thing happend – I was contacted by a Ron Soyland through my blog, skilled man who had been successfully making vacuum tubes at home for ten years by then. This was the most important benefit of my blog as Ron would willingly share many of all the knowledge I need for making my own tubes. We would more than 2.000 emails during 2012 and 2013!

May 2012

Met Ron Soyland

A crucial thing happened - through my blog, I was contacted by Ron Soyland. He is a very skilled man, who had been for ten years successfully making vacuum tubes at home.
This was the greatest thing my blog had brought, as Rod would willingly share all the knowledge I needed for making my own tubes. During 2012 and 2013, we would write more than 2,000 e-mails.

Read the full story

Present - 12. 3. 2018

We are now running low-scale production with 5 employees. We have mastered nixie tube R|Z342 and developing the smaller one.

Factory in a castle

Our workshop is located in a Brezolupy castle, we currently have 5 rooms – 2 of them are clean rooms.
We are currently able to produce more then 20 tubes per week, but still handwork is needed all the way.

Our current statistics

  • 5432 Nixie tubes manufactured
  • 2.75% Failure rate (leakage)
  • $30,569 Sales (last 30 days)
  • $75,123 Cash balance
  • 75days DTD

What's next

Future plans and goals

Our goal is to make nixie tubes affordable for as many people as possible. To do that, we need to make a factory and automate the process of making tubes. The hand work will, of course, remain in the process. But why not leave the repetitive tasks to technology.

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9

2019

New factory building

We'd like to move to new spaces, which will enable us to speed up the making and improve the quality.

2021

First Nixie on the moon

That's right.