Yes, a better-quality nixie tube will work. Burroughs are my favorite, and I dont use any other brand.
I found that with IN-1 tubes, when 2 or more cathodes glowed at the same time, a small metallic filament was shorting them together. You can measure it with an ohmmeter, and you can also zap it with a few hundred mA of current. Yes, it *will* glow when heated, until it burns out. I suggest a good bench power-supply with an adjustable current-limit, rather than voltage, to blow the filaments. Then your tube is usable again, at least for awhile. Be warned, though, that after zapping, your tube will probably fail again for the same reason, but perhaps in a different location, and with different digits. In my opinion, it's usually a sign of a poor-quality tube (though I did have 1 Burroughs 6091 tube fail like this). On a related note, NASA has done research into tin whiskers. They form in an electric field and grow at exponential rates as the whisker gets closer to shorting. I've actually *seen* one in the CCFL driver board of on of my laptops; it had the classic symptom where the screen goes dark when moved, then works again (for awhile) after rebooting. It was a smaller diameter than typical bondwires in ICs. I suspect the shorts in nixie tubes are a similar mechanism and dependent upon the type of cathode material. -- 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/009147dc-c1e8-4fdb-bd0e-4c399d310770%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
