Look behind the scenes of nixie tube making
It’s time to finish the development of the first parts of the H tube – sub-assembly of the stem and ceramic rods. I designed this connection to be done using ceramics adhesive and it seems it will work. It is vacuum safe and it will provide enough support for the rest of the internal system […]
A bit longer video – I wanted to give you an update on progress in: 1:18 – upgrade of the glassworking equipment 5:28 – residual stress in the glass after sealing 7:25 – solder glass testing 11:20 – nitrogen purging setup 15:29 – connecting wires insulation 20:17 – anode cup manufacture 24:52 – ceramic parts.
Another test made – it turns out that dumet wire with its borated protective layer is not suitable for use in a high vacuum. Maybe at room temperature.. The borax layer (or the borated compounds) evaporates under high vacuum at 500C. I will need to find another solution.
A borated dumet wire would be a perfect solution for the insulated electrical connection between stem and digits inside the tube H. Borax would work as the insulating layer while copper-clad NiFe core would do the electrical connection which is easy to spot-weld to both stem and digit. Moreover, we have plenty of dumet already, […]
While working on the tube H itself, we have to keep in mind also the design of the electronics – without an absolutely reliable driver, the panel will simply not deliver the desired experience. Our first idea was to use a master module with just a string of shift registers – we do this normally […]
Finally some progress – I succeeded in sealing of the front window. I still need to do thorough testing, evacuating it etc.. but it seems the design I chose might work. The tooling setup is temporary – I will make it safer and more productive later.
The project of the “tube H” is running well, however, there are still some voids that need to be filled. One of them: I need to find good way how to insulate wires that are connecting the digits to the stem against parasitic glow.
I made another step in the development of the “H tube”.. In this video, I am trying to seal the front window into the tube envelope for the first time. This experiment is mainly about exploring weaknesses in our equipment with the intention to adapt it to this size of the glass.
To successfully seal the glass window to the main envelope body, I need to develop a holder for the glass windows which is able to withstand high temperature and hold the glass by vacuum. I think I can mark this “done”.
I am starting a project of a new nixie tube – a large 150mm front-view nixie tube. This particular tube is designed for an artwork that will be installed in October 2020. I want to keep you regularly updated on how is this project coming along. Wish me luck 🙂
The development of firmware for a product is a neverending story. I always wanted to keep also the clocks of our first customers up-to-date and with all the latest features, so we had to come up with a way how to update their firmware remotely. Thanks for help to: Lukáš Jezný – participating on the […]
