About the author : Dalibor

I am working hard on a clocks for a contest called “When Prague Meets Shanghai” (more about contest here: WPMS). This is a first oportunity how to present working tubes in a real product.

The clock electronics is based on Arduino, uses precise DS3231 RTC and as a HV supply I used high end PSU from Yan Zeyuan.

So, I made two nixie tubes with 50mm numbers, they didn’t contain getter. Pressure in both tubes is 30torr, so the glow is slightly fuzzy, however I chose that pressure so that I would be able to achive more uniform glow at lower voltage and current. Striking voltage after aging process is around 150V, I use 170V supply with 20k current limiting resistor. Current is around 4.5ma, both tubes and PSU stay cool.

Visualization..

Tubes running at 4.5mA.

6 Comments

  1. Martin October 22, 2013 at 09:10

    Wonderful!!!!

  2. Jens October 22, 2013 at 10:25

    Unbelievable. They look better than their originals Z5680M. You are a master, Dalibor!

  3. Tomáš Müller October 22, 2013 at 23:42

    Parada! Akorat mi nejde do hlavy proc tam nemuzes ty anody pripojit normalka spodem. Jinak kdyby ti ta soutez vysla, tak to by byl naprosto luxus! Drzim place.

    • Dalibor October 23, 2013 at 07:38

      Hi, the anode is actually going through the bottom, the glass pipe on the back is empty.. ;-)

  4. Casey October 23, 2013 at 09:37

    Incredible work! I can’t wait till these are available for purchase, they are beautiful!

  5. Keith October 25, 2013 at 03:15

    Wow! Just Wow!

Comments are closed.

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