This from danyk.cz in regards to lifetime expectancy. This is probably caused by the addition of mercury, which limits evaporation of the cathode material and cathode poisoning. The lifetime is still several times underestimated, it is a minimum guaranteed lifetime. With proper handling, of mercury-enriched nixie can serve without any problem more than 5 or even 10 years of continuous operation. Especially if all of the cathodes are used evenly and sufficiently often alternated. When used in clocks it is therefore possible to achieve greater durability, particularly in frequently changing digits (seconds), than in the nixie measurement equipment, where most of the time, when they're not active, showed all zeros.
Dolam LC-516 contain mercury so you can expect a reasonable lifetime from them for your clock if you use them. I have had IN-1 tubes fail in a few weeks while others have ran for a couple of years. As with all tubes there are good production runs and there are bad production runs, it is a case of suck it and see. With technology from the 70s and 80s you cannot expect a cast iron guarantee for performance. The brightest tubes I have in clocks are Z566Ms and a set of the hens teeth ITT GNP-7AHs. After saying that, the set up of a tube is what will give the optimum in performance and longevity. Correct voltage and current will always get the best out of any tube, that is why we have data sheets from the manufacturers to assist us in design and circuitry. > >>>> -- 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/180c450c-7085-4974-add6-8abf1e388036%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
