Just an update on this issue. Indeed, it was a faulty power supply.
After I changed it in February, after this email, the clock did not show any signs of improvement. I did change it yet with another power supply somewhere in March, but the issue maintained. One of the digits started to show some discoloration and then parts of the digits where completely off. I healed it, but this time I swapped the power supplies from the old and the new clock. The clock was noticeably brighter and the healed tube had some discoloration, but no dark spots. Today, 1 day later, the tube is fully healed – no more discoloured spots. On the old clock, the tubes seemed dimmer since then. I measured the current drawn by each clock. The new one was drawing about 0.7A. The old one 0.5A. They both have a nwts and a PIR sensor. I replaced the power supply on the old clock with a more powerful one (and of a better brand), and now both clocks are equally bright. The old one draws about 0.68A now. It’s now clear that I was using a faulty power supply. Manuel From: <[email protected]> on behalf of Manuel Azevedo <[email protected]> Reply-To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Date: Monday, 20 February 2017 at 00:20 To: neonixie-l <[email protected]> Subject: [neonixie-l] Re: In18 displaying cathode poisoning after 1000hrs or less. The old clock was/is set at 173.1V. The new one was at 168.5V. So before testing, I did the following: · Set both clocks to 173.1V without any tube attached · Set both clocks to the exact same settings (tube dimming starts at 3:00am, so no tube dimming during tests) · Set both clocks to setup mode so we have the same digits lit “01 01 99” At each clock, I measured the following: Older Newest HV 173.1 173.1 R2 43.92 38.8 R3 39.1 37.1 R4 36.6 36.6 R5 35.2 37.2 R6 36.4 33.6 R7 35.6 36.9 My older clock seems to be a Rev5 clock, because on the documentation it says 10k for R2-R7. However, Rev5 mentions R15 and both my clocks don’t have R15. I don’t remember contacting Pete about R15, but it’s not there. Don’t see it also on the schematics of Rev5 documentation. The Rev6 documentation mentions R2-R7 with 8k2 and does not mention R15 at all. Conclusions so far: * The newest clock was set for 168.5V. This by itself should not be a problem, I suppose, but I increased it to 173.1V * While testing both clocks, I used different power supplies than their regular ones. One of them clearly had a problem: on the new clock, under load I got on HV 145V… Clearly a bad power supply. When replacing with another, both clocks had 173.1V when on load. * I’m going to replace the new clock with a better power supply * The “poisoned” tubes I moved to the old clock seem to be healing * I’ve also checked all my tubes have the giver at the base I’m inclined to be believe that the switched power supply might not behaving correctly. I’m replacing it on the new clock… Maybe that was the problem... I’ll assemble everything again and keep an eye on the clocks. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/neonixie-l/cgk1rEuT1lw/unsubscribe. To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/a35478e0-184b-4449-a765-f7e9f7c0ad61%40googlegroups.com<https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/a35478e0-184b-4449-a765-f7e9f7c0ad61%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- 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/4A742046-2947-4075-A026-4FC3D76169F9%40azevedomail.net. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
