Yup. My first nixie clock (Mike Harrison's design, IN-14's & IN-17's for seconds) has been running 24/7/365 for about 6 years now. Everything looks A-OK, even the IN-17's (which have a lower lifetime rating than the IN-14's)... In other words, if you treat them right, Nixies will last pretty well. (Don't think I don't have a box full of spares for when the things fail, though!)
The only failure modes I've run into in my clocks were: 1) Under-driving the nixies. When I was a neophyte, I thought that running the nixies at lower current would make them last longer (like a lightbulb, maybe?)... That's a BAD plan. Nixies need to be run at their rated current or else they suffer catastrophic cathode poisoning problems after about a year. 2) Clocks that have some extra features (I'm looking at you, Moses!) where very occasionally you are in a menu, causing nixies that normally never ever display a particular digit to have to display that particular digit. Unless you have some pretty aggressive anti-cathode-poisoning routines running, you'll see some poisoning on the digits that aren't ever used. That's normal. -Adam On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 3:43 PM, Jon <[email protected]> wrote: > > IN-18`s have a 5000 hour life > > I think the general experience is that the rated lifetimes for the > Soviet tubes are generally very conservative, particularly if they > have mercury in them (which IN-18 does). You clock design has to be > fair to them though - don't over-drive or under-drive them (too low > and you risk cathode poisoning). > > Just to give an example: the prototype of my IN-9 single digit clock > has been running essentially 24/7/365 for over 3 years. IN-9 have a > rated lifetime of 1000 hours, so we're over 180 x the rated life, with > no visible detriment in performance. My design is particularly kind to > the tubes, but even so... > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQ1567EFCY0 > > Cheers, > > Jon. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "neonixie-l" group. > To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/neonixie-l?hl=en-GB. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/neonixie-l?hl=en-GB.
