Blog⁽³¹⁾

I currently build a getter flasher according to Ron Soyland‘s design (he will publish it on his site soon). There is a few photos from the building process:

Finally, the shed is finished and I can start moving all the equipment that I gathered in recent two years there. Building of the shed was the major job during last 5 months, I didnt have much time for real nixie tube research, but that changes! I made the glassblowing stuff working today – torches, […]

New addition to the workshop, Heathway glassblowing lathe. I got it on eBay and it took almost a month to arrange a trasport from UK here to Czech republic. But it finally came off and it is now sitting firmly on the concrete block for my future garden lab (masked as garden shed) 😀 This […]

I decided to switch to oxygen concentrators from liquid oxygen in tanks. The tank is empty really fast and getting a full one is bothering, time and money consuming 😉 So I bought a slightly used Oxymat 3 from eBay, it was sold as-is and I counted with some malfunction. This one is a new […]

My leak detector suffered another defect. I was just doing some tests of the filling manifold while the filament was suddenly turned off and the needle of the vacuum gauge went out of the scale. After some time spent by looking for the problem, I found that the transformer is really hot, 110°C, that was […]

I almost finished the oven for baking out nixie tubes.. I had to replace the heating element because the previous one melted 😀 The only thing I had to add is the fuse 😉 The oven will work up to 500°C, I plan to bake the tubes at temperature of 480°C. The limiting element is […]

The last thing I had to make was a connector to neon bottle. This is a low pressure (12 bar) disposable aluminum bottle used in neon sign making. There is 7/16 UNEF thread, it uses the same standard as cans for camping stoves. I machined it from brass so I would be able to solder […]

I have been looking for reliable vacuum needle valve for a long time. It should not be to expensive, it should allow me to control the flow fine and not cost much. I tried glass system, cheap valves from China and more, but I was not satisfied with any of these. But as usually, Ron […]

The last part of the manifold was the pressure gauge, I had the 0-100 torr baratron, but no controller. The baratron needs supply of +15V and -15V. It gives linear output of 0-10V for 0-100 torr. So I build a simple power supply using two zener diodes (15V) and two 15Ω resistors. If You are […]

Finally! Something more like a nixie tube 😉 I made a test tube what will be possible to pump and fill with gas and than isolate by a glass high vacuum valve. I will test with it right pressures, gas mixtures, electrode distances and many many more.. Pictures of glowing numbers will follow soon!