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Another version of a mold for manufacturing stems is in development. Meanwhile, I am trying the process of cutting wires to pins – this will be needed once the mold is ready..

We need to develop a stem press machine for the new F nixie tube. A complex task that needs to be done step by step. In this video, I am doing the first baby steps 😉

We are starting a new project, development a new nixie tube called F.

Since I started manufacturing and selling nixie tubes and clocks, our customers from the USA formed the single biggest market for us. I remember years where we shipped 50% of our clocks to the USA. Today, I am excited to announce an improvement for our US customers – cooperation with Nicholas Stock from California. Nick […]

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 […]

I am going to switch to making videos instead of writing the blog articles. Each new video will be added as a blog entry. I hope you will like it 🙂 Yes! With Sebastian, we are trying to understand (and explain) the physics behind the fast switching of digits in a nixie tube. Link to […]

Puri and OOO clock in Grandhotel Pupp We finally delievered the Puri and OOO clock to Grandhotel Pupp in Karlovy Vary (Czech Republic). The OOO clock turned out to be extremely difficult to finish – the ceramics shrinks and deforms and matching it to exact layout of mounting holes or tubes on board with electronics […]

Meeting Paul Parry Finally, after years of email communication, I had a chance to personally meet Paul Parry with his wife and see his workshop. As you probably know, Paul Parry creates nixie clocks and other devices under brand “Bad dog designs“. Among others, Paul is creator of the wonderful Bombe clock. We spent many […]

Fog! I am skipping February and March blogposts – but I will write them, I promise 🙂 I just wanted to write April’s post while the memories are still fresh.. What happened that it is so important? Let’s start from beginning – on 8th of October 2018 we made a tube #6059. There was nothing […]

Clock boards revisions During March, we prepared revision of electronics board for Puri clock, revisited board for project NX2 (details will come), new board for our Blub clock (details soon) and few prototype boards for our new burn-in/testing device (machine we will use for burn-in and testing of our tubes). looking into list of our […]

February.. We started using GIT We are now three people writing software for our devices – Sebastian, Radim, me. The same files need to be accessed from LAN and from internet as well (Sebastian on homeoffice or me from home). So we decided to setup a GIT for our source codes. It turned out that […]

Getter cutter machine I am building a machine which will cut getter strips to individual pieces with minimal attention from the operator. The process must be clean, precise and reliable. It is not very difficult project, so I decided to take it as first project for my planned youtube video build series. I am learning […]

Okay, December is over, 2018 is over, 7.1% of 2019 is over.. It’s high time I wrote a December update 🙂 Burn-in machine Probably the most single amount of time was invested into building of the new burn-in machine. This project is completely on Sebastian, I am just a source of information about current burn-in […]

Mid November.. we are having a meeting with guys from Creepy Studio, discussing results of Designblok. I am pretty frustrated, with this amount of resources spent (wasted), trying hard not to show it and demotivate others. Actually, I am depressed. I don’t mind failing when it is about building a machine, trial and error experiments […]

This year, October was unusually warm and beautiful, it was great to look through the window while working and watch people enjoying the weather 🙂 So, this is what we did in Octorber: Puri Nixie Clock I started development of Puri Nixie Clock in August 2017, more than a year ago. In october 2018, it […]

Summer is always busy. We need to do more work before holidays season (July/August) and then need to catch up with the work we delayed – and this happens in September. Fortunately, beside regular work on nixie tubes and clocks, we started several new projects and I want to write about these. Sebastian – our new […]

Everytime I finally get to writing a post I am surprised how much time passed.. Since September, I decided to post updates every month. There are more and more things happening, more open projects, more people working on them.. So I must write continuously. Otherwise the information are condensed and miss the details and opinions I […]

New year started in good way, there were no troubles with manufacture on our side, no surprises on side of suppliers. After Christmas holidays, we jumped into work relaxed, with new energy. The days are longer, with more sun, spring will come soon 😉

Another exciting year is over, let’s take what it brought to our nixie tube endeavour!

Customers often ask questions related to lifespan and reliability of our nixie tubes. We recently made a tube with serial number #3000, I think we now have representative sample of tubes to make some nice statistics. In following months, I will write several articles covering all the problematics.

Recent 6 months were pretty busy, we now make much faster progress in development of our little nixie tube factory than anytime ever. This blogpost is a summary of our successes and also problems we face to. Let’s take a look what’s been going on here: Zen Nixie Clock The Zen Nixie Clock is what […]

Year 2017 is here, right time to review year 2016. Year 2016 was about transformation from one-man-show to small company. And because business is about numbers, I decided I will share them with you. Maybe business people among you will have some notes to my decisions 😉 One year ago, I set myself a goal […]

I am bringing new information regarding the Zen Nixie Clock progress.. Briefly, 99% of all things ready, whole project is now blocked by issues with the aluminum stands.  

Middle of September is here – expected time of shipment of the Zen Nixie Clocks, let’s take a look at what is ready and what we are waiting for.  

New updates regarding the Zen Nixie clock are here! Aluminum parts surface finish I just received first small batch of tube bases from Adruu, Netherlands based company specialised in surface treatments of aluminum parts. The results is amazing – uniform surface, very nice satin texture. The bases are bead blasted first, then bright dipped and eventually […]

The Zen nixie clock is successfully evolving, right time to share the current phase in a post! Display case The case is designed in a minimalistic way to emphasize the nixie tubes themselves. The overal shape of the case and surface finish of the parts will fit every interior. The stand is made of aluminum, […]

It has been almost two years since my last post on the blog. In 2014, I decided to switch to Facebook and add only short posts with photos. Facebook is great platform for sharing short posts and interact with people, but I found I miss writing more detailed posts. We are now working on several interesting projects […]

I think it might be interesting to write down all the info about my participation in the When Prague Meets Shanghai contest as it eventually became one of the milestones in my fight for resurrecting the nixie tubes manufacture.

Hi! Do You count yourself as a nixie tube enthusiast? Would You like to become a part of nixie tube’s rebirth? I worked really really hard past two years, on full time basis, putting a small scale nixie tube manufacture together and I am almost ready now.. I designed first nixie clock with tubes made […]

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:

Soooo.. After six weeks of intensive development, I am posting first photo of finished ShanghaiTime clock. As I already wrote, I designed this clock for a glass-art contest “When Prague Meets Shanghai” arranged by a czech company producing high-end glass chandeliers called Preciosa. I plan to write more, attach some photos of the innards, electronics […]

I decided to establish a Facebook page for nixie making project. I plan to add there some random photos, snapshots and so.. I called it “DaliborFarny.com”, on that domain will be a static content and some products for sale I hope 😉 You are welcome here: Facebook page

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.

As I promised, I started making a sample tubes. I am now working on a project for one local contest, more later.. And I made two new tubes as a prototypes for that project. All three tubes, from oldest to newest.

I experienced big success today. I sealed first really working nixie tube (or nixie retort ;-). I surprisingly didn’t forget to do any individual step in the making process and ended up with a tube that by far exceeded my expectations. I tested the tube carefully on the helium leak detector several times, I also […]

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, […]

I got a sample of etched parts today, the quality is absolutely outstanding! Sharp edges, no etched spots, no under-etched places. I cant wait to put it all together! Sorry for quality of the photos, all were made in a hurry, as usual 😉 Hexagonal anode grid

I made some minor changes is the last nixie tube design and decided to get it etched from brass. It would be better to have it made from stainless steel, but the company I use for etching experience some problems with photo resist, so I decided to use a brass, only for this test. Brass […]

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 […]

Hi all, the frequency of posting updates decreased significantly, but don’t be afraid, I am still working hard to produce real nixie tubes. I am building a garden shed now, I collected so many crazy stuff that I need more room again. I will post some photos of the garden shed later 😉 I am […]

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 […]

It has been some time since my last blog post, don’t be afraid, I am still working on nixie tube project! Around 2-3 hours a day in average. I am building a shed on the garden where I will place all the workshop. I hope it will be finished in one month. I am also […]

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 decided to build a tube what would use the technologie like original nixie tubes. I made a mica sheets, used a glass spacers, build an enclosure for digits with grid.. I also made a new style stem with evacuation tube inside, just as experiment.. The tube could have a round top cap.. The tube […]

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 […]

So, there is my first nixie tube. I was really eager to make anything sealed, so I didn’t pay much attention to details and lifetime of the tube. There are two (stainless steel) cathodes – “0” and “7”, a small piece of stainless steel sheet is used as the anode. Distance of the cathodes to […]

Finally! I saw a neon glowing today, first time in my system! I filled the tube first on 1 torr with argon, then to 32 torr with neon, so the ratio is 1:31 = 97% neon and 3% argon. The glow doesn’t cover whole digit, the shape of electrodes is not perfectly parallel and there […]

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 […]

Just a short test.. The digit height is around 6 cm, voltage 400V, current limiting resistor 8kΩ. The needle valve is very very fine, it is possible to increase the pressure in the 10-2 torr scale, much finer than necessary for nixie tube work (tens of torrs)!

I finally made a progress in making my new gas filling manifold. I finally made it modular instead of brazing it together. I had really big problems with brazing the aluminum, I use the “Castolin 190 FB” solder and had to learn how to use it.. It is necessary to heat the aluminum sufficiently (approx. […]

I have just made first test with the glow tube I made yesterday.. It works, all seals seems to be vacuum tight, or at least good for my purposes (short-term test). It turned out that making the glow even along all the number is pretty difficult, I will have to form the anode grid flat […]

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!

I spent some time on the leak detector recently. There are two fans, AC 230V, one for the diffusion pump, one for cooling the electronic box. Both started to make loud noise, so I had to replace them. I was surprised that the new fans are absolutely identical to these original 30 (or how many) […]

I started to build gas filling manifold, the previous solutions were not satisfactory 🙁 This manifold should have these features: all parts brazed together (by AlSi compound) kf-25 flange connection baratron connection evacuation tube connection valve for fine control of neon valve for fine control of argon valve for fine control of vacuum, when the […]

I have just finished first chuck for the glass lathe. The last part – worm holder – turned out to be much more easier than I had originally thought. I just drilled a hole into U holder cut (laser cut), cut a half of the hole and got a groove for the worm axis. All […]

I started training glassblowing, the glass tube mounted in my metal lathe. It is not so easy as I had thought! Right flame, right temperature, right pressure on the glass.. Many aspects of the working with glass to learn.. By this simple project, I want to practise: Making the leak-tight stem Sealing the previously prepared […]

The high pressure valves from eBay finally arrived yesterday. The seller dailyappliance2010, item number #290804664389. It is not intentionally a vacuum valve, but as Ron reffered, this valves should be leak tight, at least for the purpose of filling the tubes with gas.. I bought two brass adapters with hose nozzle on one side (hole […]

I am waiting for some stuff to come from US before I can continue building the inert gas manifold.. So I brushed up the parts of the oven for baking the tubes and made some progress on it. I found some Promasil fire-resistant boards in a local shop in 50% sale, perharps Christmas sale 😉 […]

I have been moving to new house recently, November was really busy month, almost no time for nixie research.. But there are also good news, I have more free room in the new house and big garden, where I plan a shack for nixie related activities (metal lathe and some other noisy and dirty tooling).. […]

The chuck is now mounted on the spindle, also the worm gears are now ready.. I wait for the jaws to be cut on the laser..

I made an idler pulley tonight so I am able to finally try turning the chuck!

I have almost no time to spend on nixies recently (moving to new house, newborn twins..), so there are some photos of my previous work.. It is mostly preparing of tools for work in the future.. A glassworking torch, oxy-gas..

Altough I haven’t written any post recently, I am spending almost all my free time on the nixie tubes making (or better – trying to make 🙂 ).  I am quite busy these days, mostly because of newborn twins ;-).. I built new spot welder (a tranformer based one) with a pincher and a stem […]

At the beginning – I would like to thank to Ron Soyland, I would not be able to get it work without his great help (hundreds of emails) and his extensive knowlege. Thank You Ron! When I bought the machine, I thought I will just google and download a manual for it. But it eventually […]

I am step by step disassembling all the helium leak detector I bought recently. There are several things to do.. cleaning the flanges, replacing the o-ring, checking the oil in pumps.. Ron Soyland mentioned that he disassembled also the spectrometer unit to check the filament state, so I decided to do so as well. The […]

I tried to etch a stainless steel today.. I used a mixture of hydrochloric acid (HCl), water and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). The peroxide acts here as a catalysator, so when the solution stop etching, just add few mls of it and it start again (as long as there is still some HCl in it..). First […]

I accidentally skipped several levels in my research and bought a helium leak detector. It was located in France so I had to ask seller to arrange a shipment to Czech republic and.. it arrived yesterday! It is Alcatel ASM 51, 30 years old machine, but if it is working it will be much mightier […]

I finnaly got a stainless steel foil (316 type) I orded a few months ago from US. I don’t understand why such a primitive thing is impossible to get (or just find) in EU 🙁 The thickness of it is 0.1mm, I was afraid it would be too thin, but it exactly what I need. […]

I got some old non-working tubes to disassemble as Ron Soyland does. There are some nice pieces of material that are I could hardly find else as a molybdenum sheets, nickel sheets and pipes, getters, tungsten electrodes.. It is also nice stuff to study for possible working techniques.

I will try to make an induction heater from common induction cooker. Ron Soyland have already warned me that it will perhaps be impossible due to too low frequency of the induction cookers (60khz, needed is several hundred khz). I will try anyway, it would be so easy to just replace the coil that it […]

I used to spot weld wires for electrodes by placing them across and weld. That works but doesn’t look well and I think it makes strain in the glass when sealed (more steel wire in glass, different thermal expansions). I decided to make a simple jig from some aluminum junk so that I will be […]

The most difficult part of the tube will be definitely stems. More than 10 pins must go through, all vacuum tight of course, on small area. I have some ideas about how to do it properly, but the set up will be pretty complex. Furnace with inert atmosphere, high temperature (around 1000ºC), some kind of […]

I spent last two weeks by making completely standalone argon tubes. I wanted to learn how to make a vacuum-tight feedthroughs and try to tip off the tube from filling system. I prepared a simple manifold for filling with argon, what turned out to be leaky, but I didn’t go for super purity gas and […]

I was struggling with a glassworking lathe recently.. All went well, until I tried to start the motor 😉 My original shaft (inside the small bearings) connected to motor’s shaft was made from aluminium. But probably during pressing it into bearings and pulley, it bent slightly, so it became eccentric 🙁 So the shaft was […]

This PSU was made according to Lindsay’s PSU here: 40-400V, 20W power supply. I would like to thank for the writing of that great howto.

One of the most important tools for working with glass will be glassworking lathe. I decided to build one by myself, commercial solutions are too expensive or aren’t available.. It will consists of four ball bearings, two dc motors, one linear bearing, several aluminum profiles and some minor parts.. Synchronizing of the chucks will be […]

After some unsuccessful experiments with common (non-vacuum) stopckocs, valves, etc., I finally decided to use stopcocks designated for high vacuum. I found some on eBay for $25/piece. I applied a vacuum grease, set up an simple vacuum system with hoses and tried it. The stopcock is pretty vacuum tight, but there are still some other […]

I’ve finally got an argon bottle, 1.3m³ of pure argon (99.996%) pressed in 8l bottle. It is pretty heavy 😉 The argon was chosen because it is has similar features to neon, but is much cheaper and – the most important – it is available.. This image comes from Wikipedia. The argon compared to neon […]

I was working on electronic part of pirani gauge a few weeks, so there were no new posts.. I moved the system from breadboard to the plastic box, added display and microprocessor. Measurement and control of the display is based on arduino. I am not going to describe the function of pirani gauge, there is […]

I have successfully done my first experiments with vacuum and gas discharge.. It was quite simple, the vacuum pump is much powerful I expected.. I work only with air, I have no noble gas available yet.. There is a short video I made today. First, I turned on a HV power supply, then the pump […]

I planned to use a charging hoses with integrated valves to control provide and control the vacuum in all parts of system. But I found that the valves can’t hold the vacuum and let the air in 🙁 So I cut the valves and currently I use only the hoses mounted on a glass tube.. […]

I finally cleared the pump from mercury (at least what I found), placed new o-ring (what I destroyed myself) and refilled the original Ultragrade 19 oil. The pump is pretty silent (much more than I had expected), I am looking forward to test it.. Some photos..    

We can’t use a soldering inside the vacuum tube, the tin would melt during the heating of the tube because of the tin low melting point. Instead of that it is necessary to use a welding, probably the best solution is small spot welder, I choose a capacitive version. Large capacitor is charged on 16-20V […]

As I mentioned before, I am going to use a borosilicate glass in combination with tungsten wire. This glass is used in labs for scientific glass blowing, so the first place where I started to look for that glass were e-shops with lab supplies. There ale lots of suppliers, but all want some minimum quantity […]

I bought a used Edwards E2M5 vacuum pump for $150. I had thought the vacuum pump would be the most expensive part of the system, what a luck to find a pump for that price.. The only problem here is that after unpacking the pump from the box, I found a few drops of mercury […]

I started searching for material by looking for tungsten wire.. I found several expensive offers on eBay, too much money for several inches of wire 🙁 Then I wrote several wire manufacturers, there the price/length ratio was much better, but the minimal quantity I had to order was 10kg of wire ($1500) 🙁 Finally, I […]