On 9 Feb 2012, at 19:06, Jeff Thomas wrote:
And while I'm on the rant; the techs who re-purpose those plastic baseball boxes and little heirloom domes for a nixie clock cover are in need of serious help ;)
Thank you for offering Jeff, because in the UK I cannot find those baseball boxes at a sensible price anywhere here and I sure could use some help sourcing some cheapies. So good of you to offer. Mind you I've not seen one in the flesh. Are they horrible styrene jobbies with visible seam lines?
Sometimes I think it's all a matter of not what you have but how you use it. It so happens I need some good acrylic cubes. These used to be sold as cube picture frames, but it seems that craze ended in the 1970s. I have a few, but they are a bit big and I don't like the quality so much. I like the chunky acrylic boxes MUJI do but nothing they sell is quite right for a nixie clock. The quality is good and they don't have that awful 3 degree release angle that just says 'cheap tacky injection moulded box'.
Heirloom doom, I mean dome, also appeals to me for some ideas. I found some at a sale with horrible glass 'planes in them, which I dremelled off as they were welded onto the top of the glass dome. Yet to build a light-up clock inside them, but one day I might.
Generally I agree with you, a rectangular slab of whatever, whether it be high grade machined whatever or expensive whatever, with six tubes poking out of it does not float my boat, but some people like and expect that so I am sure that approach remains very popular.
Personally I want to get into more organic shaped housings, but I cannot yet afford either to have them made by Shapeways or to build a decent enough RepRap machine to squirt them out myself. So I am thinking scratch-build, elbow-grease, traditional plaster or silicone moulds, GRP and other highly toxic methods.
I have Catmull-Clark subdivision surface 3D computer modelling down to a fine art now, so I am waiting until the output technology and I can meet somewhere where I can afford to interface with it. On my deathbed probably.
Generally it is all good fun and nixies look so great they are a wonder to behold, just wire those Doreens up and enjoy them. They don't do a lot just sitting in a box and you might be dead next week.
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