The result is a compact assembly, typical for a 1960s build, but…
Good luck repairing these if an IC driver fails!
Had these for a while and not yet thought of a project.
Perhaps build a “Steam Punk” style Nixie clock with these little modules?
What would you do with them?
Charging my eTron and have some cool neighbors at EA this morning!
WAYMO Ojai minivans charging.
Michigan plates, here in Portland, OR for field trials with a human driver behind the wheel.
My friend and I did a Nixie swap. He did a teardown of a Fluke bench DVM, which had been hacked quite a bit.
One of the B5870 Nixies had “thin wires coming out of the base” - was it a mod?
Looks to me as if a previous repair needed a similar Nixie tube, and someone made this to fit.
Or, someone was modding the unit and wanted to add access to the dp symbols, which had been trimmed off.
Either way the Nixie in question works!
The four added on wires are DPL, DPR, K6, and A. (this tube has a second Anode wire, so not sure why the bodge wire was added, or why K6 was already snipped off?)
The new wires were covered with epoxy glue, and when I got the factory base cap had been placed on, but not glued.
The work was well done, someone put some effort in to this project.
Comments Welcome!
Progress with our 3D Printer! Newest tool and a steep learning curve over the last three weeks.
Here are a couple of 3D printed covers that replace the factory lids supplied with these Hammond brand enclosures.
Took a few tries to get this far. New to 3D printing tools, and learning the cloud based “TinkerCAD”. Not really an engineering design tool, these parts had to be tweaked and reprinted.
Quite pleased with the first round prints.
Broke one IN-16 Nixie along the way. The Nixie tubes are direct soldered to PCBs that I completed and tested last month.
Next phase is to convert the protoboard electronics to a suitable PCB for this project.
What do you think? Comments welcome!
Did I land a great Nixie deal? Nine Burroughs “Super” tubes (B6091) for $349?
Well, no. The nine Nixies were rotted out, probably salt water corrosion, from an eBay seller on the Florida coast.
Of the nine, three were “Air tubes” and rusted into their sockets. Six lit up but had a lot of poisoned cathodes. Possible to fix? All Pins corroded.
This deal went bad. I had to open a complaint with eBay Corp. Finally got a 100% refund.
The seller said “seller doesn’t accept returns”. Then said “Buyer has to pay the return shipping”.
I boxed up the whole thing and sent it back, got a prompt 100% refund from eBay Corp.
Will the seller flip it back on eBay? Or, do the right thing and take it to eWaste?
Caveat Emptor!
Been thinking about this for, well, since COVID. A Nixie clock with large tubes.
To help the dream come true I’m working on an IN-18 Concept. Four tubes on a minimalist box.
What do you think?
This B5855 Nixie tube has dark patches on several numerals.
Generally known as Cathode Poisoning it is caused by poor surface quality preventing cathode glow.
Parts of the cathode surface have become high resistance and non-emitting, due to spluttering or other surface contamination.
Many long life Nixie tubes reduce this problem by treating the cathode metal during manufacturing.
A common preventive treatment is releasing Mercury vapor in the gas fill, and it condenses and deposits a thin layer on the relatively colder metal of the cathode.
Can this tube be restored? Do you know of a method that can at least improve it?
Let’s discuss. I’m trying to avoid removing and disposing of this one.
Comments welcome,
I’m on day two with our BambuLab X2D. Never used a 3D printer before.
For my second print job I made the black and white Panda (was offered during the start up instructions)
This turned out really nice! The body is articulated, and it printed quickly and ran well in two colors.
So now the puzzle. What is the second object that it printed? What do we do with it?
Sorry for the noob question!
I designed this circuit and the PCB for the Burroughs “Super Size” top view Nixies (B6091)
Then my life hit a bump. The schematic, Gerbers, EAGLE files, and all the Windows backup files were destroyed, along with the actual PC. It all went to eWaste (not my idea, but “S happens”)
Only recently I found this piece, with Nixie tubes still in the Mill-Max sockets, in a forgotten cardboard box in the basement. Such joy!
Now should I “Reverse Engineer” this? Or, should I start over with a new PCB?
Those big Nixies are quite rare in the modern world.
Wrapping up a week long break from the bench, and looking forward to picking up and continuing some Nixie projects that are now underway.
Anyone else “Making Nixie Stuff” over the long weekend?
When firing up the IN8-2 Six PCB it didn’t go well at all!
This is a classic problem, somehow the Anode and a Cathode connection were swapped.
My error started at reading the data sheet, which is written in Russian.
The pinout was viewed “on bottom” and in my world all components are viewed “on top”.
How to fix?
The six tubes had to come off the PCB. The PTH for all had to be cleared of solder. I found that manipulating the Anode wire and rotating the rest one space would work.
But… The Cathodes for Four and DP were now swapped, so clipping the DP wire (not used) and a bodge wire fixed the hardware.
It also required new mapping for the firmware table that directs which cathode should light.
Surely, I’m not the first to make this mistake?
Just powered up a new build, and after some wrangling with it, the Nixies light up!
The six digits and drivers are on a PCB that I designed and fabbed last month.
To power it up I built a protoboard around an ESP32 module.
Still have work to do on the animated Colon neons.
The timekeeper for this one is a GPS module, which needs an external antenna when in my basement lab (not too surprising)
Still exploring how the GPS time signal will be incorporated, as there’s also a battery backed RTC on this one.
Comments and suggestions welcome!
If I had a drawing for the Burroughs version I have misplaced it, but I did find one from ITT.
This would have been useful when I made a Kicad library package recently. The dims I read with a digital caliper have two errors, both in the location of the DP wires.
My first attempt was “off” a small amount, not a show stopper, but annoying nevertheless.
Dim ‘P’ is not equal to Dim ‘Q’, and
Dim ‘N’ I completely missed!
I’ll correct my library, and “spin” the PCB files.
Returning to issue of an optical filter to improve contrast, there are/were some factory supplied Red filtered Nixies.
This is an RFT Z573M type.
Again, trying to get a digital PIX to look like these do to the naked eye is a challenge.
I’ll do a side by side test, if I can locate two of the same type number and one with the red coating and one without.
Some progress PIX while building a Nixie display PCB using six NL5870 tubes.
The PCB was designed for B5855 tubes that are almost identical (the pinouts are slightly different, so one redundant Anode wire has to be snipped off)
The SMT parts are soldered first, using a “Pizza Oven” (not used for food)
Without a stencil the solder paste was applied by syringe, and is very hard to get the volume just right.
The cathode driver IC is a challenging 0.65mm pitch TSSOP28 package.
THT parts are hand soldered, and finally the glass tubes and neons. Aligning the Nixie pins is quite difficult!
My baseline range, when the eTon was new 204miles.
AUDI did a firmware update to release more usable battery capacity, and we got about 220miles (+7.8%)
A charging session after winter “storage” (not indoors) was a disappointing 187mi.
Was this the expectation after five years? Did we not use the best method, by leaving the battery at about 60% full for four months and no driving at all?
**What are other owners finding out?**
Today I drove about 80mi and immediately jumped on a public L3 (EA) charger.
The range at the end of charging was an amazing **226miles!!**
By the time I got home (2miles away) it settled at 216miles (with A/C on green)
*I’m delighted to have 200+ But will it hold?*
The nice thing about birthday’s as adults is picking your own present!
Sure, you will loose the element of surprise, but let’s face it, isn’t a “non-surprise” gift, even to yourself, still worth a smile?
My big day is next week, or a week after that, who knows? Who cares?
So forgive me for opening this one a little early.
I’m thinking Nixie clock, right?
I keep these on my bench as a reminder that Nixies are glass and fragile.
Turns out that the non-lighting IN-17, that might have had an internal short, was a red herring.
On closer inspection I found that all three Nixies on the same bus had a missing “six”.
There was an intermittent failed soldering on the driver IC. Hard to notice this without using a microscope!
I still have the original IN-17 with a “Six” short.
To check Nixie operation I can run a test that uses the rotary encoder to scan through digits and also select which Nixie to drive.
A couple of hours lost today, but a good learning experience.
Comments Welcome,
Another BAD day here, second IN-17 to fail. The first was several weeks ago, and these two were in completely different builds.
In each case one digit (cathode) fails to light, but the other nine work properly.
It’s a MUX drive scheme and three tubes are in parallel, but only one of the three fails.
It is not the solder or lead out wire, and on closer inspection under the microscope it is an internal short. In both dead tubes the same cathode (digit six) is the only failure.
The short is about 1K5 between the cathode and anode leads.
The root cause is an insulation break where the internal connection ribbon passes over a mica insulator and over the edge of the metal frame. The frame connects to the anode.
I have not cut (opened) the tubes, in fact one is still soldered to the PCB, and will take some effort to remove and install a replacement without further damage.
Anyone else have a Nixie horror story, or any insight into this problem?