Hi,
so 15 minutes is the cutoff where the inonization has become too low? I
just remembered I have the same problem in my very first IN-14 Nixie
clock, some digits usually take a few seconds to ignite when powering it
up after a longer standby time. I have no idea, though, how long the
minimum standby time is in order to reproduce this effect.
I do not know if temperature could be responsible. Room temperature
corresponds to some 25meV. Typical ionizing energies in Neon are in the
range of eV, see here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionization_energies_of_the_elements_%28data_page%29
The outermost electron needs almost 41 eV to get ionized.
Jens
Do you also drive them with a variable cathode current? If I drive
them with a reasonable current right from the start, they ionize just
as quick as the other tubes, or at least I don't see any difference.
But when I drive them on a low current it becomes obvious this 1 tube
is sometimes very slow.
Jens, you ask "is it really strange", but even if I do time triggers
with 1 minute intervals, the suspected tube still ionizes quickly.
It's only when I leave it off for say 15 minutes that I see a
difference. I would think that even after 1 minute the ionization will
have come to a complete rest, or not? It seems like it is temperature
related, that the gas needs to cool down for a relatively long time
before the problem shows up.
Michel
On Sep 2, 1:40 am, kay486 <[email protected]> wrote:
I have noticed the exact same thing with all of mine LC-513 (Dolam) tubes.
When i pop them in a clock on the seconds place, they all the numbers tend
to flicker, some will have stable glow faster than others, it usualy
doesent take longer than 30 seconds for all o them to glow fine. I asume
that the multiplexing plays some role in this too.
Ive also seen some neon bulbs that have this sort of weir flickering on
them (im not relating to that AC flickering) the glow of one of the bulbs
in my clock tends to jump up and down on the cathode. If i have them turned
off for a longer time before turning on, the flickering is really slow, it
jumps up and down only like once per second, but soon after that it starts
to excelerate to a poin when it all really unstable, it jumps up and down
like six times per second! The weird thing is it happes only on one bulb!
The other glows just fine. Ive seen this on some youtube videos too, so im
not the only one. Does anybody know whats the problem with that?
On Saturday, September 1, 2012 1:12:36 PM UTC+1, Jens Boos wrote:
Hi Michel,
So basically it could be that if the pressure is higher than what it
ought to be, it is likely to be not visible once the gas has ionized,
but it may still affect the ionization time?
yep, that was my point.
The strangest thing what happens is that if I leave this tube off for
a while (say 15 minutes) the ionization process is usually slow. On
the other hand, if I trigger a time reading just a few times after
each other, the first reading might be slow but all the next readings
will be just normal.
Is it really strange? Once an ignition has been triggered, there are
much more ionized gas molucules around, thus making the next ignition
much easier.
Jens
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