I suspect most of the devotees end up not being rich because the fritter away their time and money on nixie tubes. We can hope there is an exception to the rule.
Also, at 15 to 30 mins a tube, the custom made tubes will be quite expensive. It wiuld be nice to see all of those steps automated some to a melody with a little quicker tempo. We don't need to make millions of tubes in a year, just thousands or maybe 10s of thousands of 10 or so varieties. -joe -----Original Message----- From: figureloop Sent: 07/02/2011, 11:29 PM To: neonixie-l Subject: [neonixie-l] Re: Possible source forproducing new nixies? On Jul 2, 5:31 pm, Charles MacDonald <[email protected]> wrote: > Trick is always tooling costs. to make your run of the mill nixie you > need to have the digits. They have to be perfectly uniform, lest they > not light evenly and perfectly flat. The holes for the Stacking have to > be all in the right place. The trick is to use modern technology to reduce and/or eliminate tooling. The solution for the digits is laser cutting. No tooling at all, just an NC program. > You might be able to do it with photo-etching, but will likely need a > die set make for each digit. Someone making Audio tubes may be able to > have a supply of the right materials. but you will need another die to > cut the Mica. > > The audio guys have octal and 9 pin minature bases so you either have to > hope they have the tooling to make so kind of base. A compatatron base > would do (12 pins) but they were probably not a production item in > eastern Europe or Germany where most of the activity is currently > located. The maker would have to risk upsetting their 12AX7 business to > put a different glass mould on their machine. if they make the "button > base" in house. A jig to make a base could be hand machined. This can't be that hard. Look at the video of the French guy hand making a triode. Everything he does is production quality, yet accessible at low costs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl-QMuUQhVM The key is to use one's head and time to create a low cost production system. Since the time is valuable, this has to be a task for a rich, retired, devotee. > > A compactron base fits on a T9 bulb, so that would not be too difficult. > The base seals on the bottom , but so does an Octal so they might be > able to do that part without munging their bread and butter work. > > The last is to redesign their pump down setup to allow the introduction > of a gas mixture. If Mercury is needed, they probaly need a permit to > make something new, and will have to set up the design to take multiples > of the mercury sources used in Florescent lamps. > > NOW on the positive side, once you have done ALL that, it should not be > more than twice as hard to build a nixie than to build a 6V6. > > -- > Charles MacDonald Stittsville Ontario > [email protected] Just Beyond the > Fringehttp://www.TelecomOttawa.net/~cmacd/ > No Microsoft Products were used in sending this e-mail. -- 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.
