On Thursday, June 11, 2015 at 1:03:44 AM UTC-4, Dman777 wrote: > > I was thinking about buying one of these.... I thought before I pull the > trigger, any comments on them? There isn't much I know about VFD other > than I like the way they look. Do they last as long as Nixie Tubes? >
In the clocks these tubes were originally designed for (Elektronika 7), there is a substantial loss of brightness after a few hundred hours of operation, after which the rate of dimming decreases. Eventually some or all of the dot will not illuminate. Here is a picture comparing brand-new tubes (left) with tubes with many 10's of thousands of hours (right): http://www.tmk.com/blog/6F5S8704-s.jpg The tubes are inexpensive (I paid under $1 each, but that was for over 1000 tubes) - the problem is that they are a bit of a pain to solder in and align properly: http://www.tmk.com/blog/6F5S8773-s.jpg Also, when purchasing replacement tubes, be aware that there are 3 types - 1, 2, and 3. You want Type 1, as Types 2 and 3 have some of the dots connected together internally. At least the clock you're looking at uses a sensible number of tubes - the Elektronika 7-06K uses 48 of them! -- 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/c135b3c9-cf0a-4c48-827d-97cc742c1158%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
