Hi All, first post here, so go easy on me... ;)
I read here that people have been having problems with IN-1 reliability, but in my (admittedly not huge) experience, I have not so far seen any IN-1 tube fail, even if I have a reasonable number of them in use (6 on a "SixNix" clock from PV Electronics, 6 each on two home brew Arduino based clocks, 4 on another home brew, 2 in two separate single digit home brew clocks). The longest running of these has been going full time for about 2 years (about 17000 hours). All clocks (except the single digit ones) run ACP every 10 minutes. I have never had a failure, and I didn't even consider the possibility of a tube failure up until now, so I'm a little bit disturbed by the idea that others have had to replace tubes after 15 days. All of the multi-digit clocks are 1 x n multiplexed, and the latest clocks I have built use 1 x 6 multiplexing, with weekend blanking and ambient light dimming. At night, each tube is on 10% (dimming factor) of 16% (multiplexing factor) of the total time. The oldest clock "SixNix" just has static night time dimming. I *have* seen grid discolouration on only the single digit clocks which are running practically in a "direct" (non-multiplexed) mode, but even this is not clear. I have one with a tube from 1984, and one with a tube from 1987. The 1984 tube appears to be degrading, but the 1987 one does not. Degrading here means only that the grid has lost it's shine. I'd like to try to understand better why I have not had any failures while others have. Is multiplexing simply extending the failure point, or are there perhaps other factors that influence the life time? I'm using K155s with 2k7 Anode resistors and a more or less regulated 180V supply (more or less because the regulation is done in software, so there is a bit of ripple about). Did I just get very lucky, or is there something that I am unwittingly doing right? Is there any variation by year that anyone is aware of? Any idea when the Hg was added? Thanks for any input or ideas. Ian -- 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/2bc9a096-e602-40fd-9ac9-1a4a44996da2%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
