| I've played with og3's, I thought they were part argon, I might be wrong though. | The brightness of the glow is also a bit less than a neon tube.
There are other gases that glow blue/violet. The only reason, I'm thinking its not argon, is that argon is a larger atom than neon. The color does correspond to energy transitions, with violet having the most energy, and red having the lowest. Orange is just a tad more energetic than red. How that translates to ionization speed, I have no clue. I tried looking at the emissions of these tubes with a cheap spectrometer, but still got multiple lines. It really needs to be done with a good quality calibrated spectrometer, and in absolute darkness. Still, a single element will have multiple lines, and it still may be a mix, of several gasses. I've also heard helium tossed around. That also glows blue, and has the bad habit of being able to leak right thru glass. That was a problem we had with HeNe lasers. So other than the high dud rates of these tubes, the glow brightness, or lack of it, is a second strike against these tubes. The 3rd guide doesn't really bother me. Especially, when stepped by a uC. That means 40 rods instead of 30, for finer resolution. That's why I like using Japanese DK23 dekatrons, with my "do-hickie" circuit. 40 rods, and it glows orange ! Nice to hear someone else having a dekatron pendulum, as part of their nixie clock. Jason Harper started it a long time ago, and I've used it on 4 of my own, but I haven't made a new clock in ages. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/neonixie-l/-/iN50jPYNlSMJ. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
