I've seen 2 types of spinner circuits: Digital (my preference), and analog (I've never used it).
When I was debugging the spinner in my big clock several years ago (A101 dekatron), I found that a rather large voltage-swing at the cathodes, roughly 20 volts, was needed for reliable operation. I can imagine a dekatron will age over time and have a larger voltage drop, which could eat into the design-margin. Easiest thing to check is measuring the HV supply voltage vs datasheet spec; if that's getting close my first guess is tube-aging effects. If you see a lot of ripple voltage (is this running from a line-voltage tripler ?) then as you said the electrolytic could be wearing-out. Any chance you can get some scope traces of the cathode pins ? For a simple spinner, all 10 numerical cathodes will be tied together (just like the other 2 sets of shift-cathodes that are tied-together internal to the tube itself). I'm running my A101 at 500 volts, and 450uA. It's been going 24/7 for over 5 years now with no signs of degradation. It's actually more reliable than the Burroughs 6091 nixies in the clock. -- 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/31b58f71-1147-4acf-bf65-4f956246ec6c%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
