Thank you for the responses so far. What interests mwe the most about all of this, is that this is making me wonder exactly what it is
that determines initially when the tube is brand new, the difference between the bond wires and the actual digit cathodes. Upon close examination of these dud tubes, and a known good working one, I can see no obvious difference between them. Looking closely, I see that the bond wires run very closely to the outside of the cylindrical shaped anode. It makes perfect sense to me that these wires be surrounded with a neon glow, simply because they are so close to the anode. I want to know what the tube designers did to prevent this glow, and why it is happening now. In other words, what exactly has happened to these tubes from sitting in their boxes since 1968, which would make the wires glow now, yet they did not glow whehn the tubes left the factory. Or possibly this was a defective batch that was never any good from day 1. I suspect that they have leaked. Something is probably up with the internal pressure, and/or the gas mixture. Perhaps some air got in. Not enough to completely kill it, but enough to cause this highly abnormal behavior. I bet Dalibor might know. Perhaps I'll contact him and attempt to pick his brain a bit. If anyone would know, he would. I will say this much, however: Looking back over the past 20+ years of nixie tube collecting and use, I am concluding that Burroughs 6844A tubes are often found bad for a variety of reasons. Have had many scrounged up at hamfests, etc. Lots of bad ones. However, the National brand NL-6844A tubes seem to have a much better chance of still being ok. 6844A turns out to be not such a great tube. But I built a clock that has them prominently sticking out from the clear front panel. I have another clock in the works that uses 8422 tubes. Those seem to be quite good as far as a high percentage of them still being ok. So my search for 6844A spares will continue. I am now working with the Ebay seller of these (8) 6844A duds to see if I can get back my $78 (ouch!) that I spent on them. -Chuck ---- Original Message ---- From: "Paul Andrews" <p...@nixies.us> Sent: 12/11/2020 9:32:49 AM To: "neonixie-l" <neonixie-l@googlegroups.com> Subject: [neonixie-l] Re: Bad batch of Burroughs 6844A nixies I have about 12 6844A, all NOS, none of them work - they show the same symptoms that you described. On Friday, December 11, 2020 at 1:45:30 AM UTC-5 gregebert wrote: I have not been able to figure that out for years. You would think the internal leads were coated with an insulator so they dont glow, or perhaps they use a different metal with a higher workfunction than the actual cathodes, so they would not glow in normal circumstances. But when the cathodes are still visible, I dont understand why they have no glow. I doubt they would be selectively plated with another metal, which completely sputtered away, leaving them unable to glow. I have a bag of dead nixies, mostly 5031/6844, took 2 out, and microwaved them for 2 seconds. Got a brilliant crimson glow. One of them shows some cathodes working, so now I have to go back thru the bag to make sure I find the totally dead ones, or at least the ones that have glowing only on the bondwires, and nuke them in the microwave oven. I have other boxes for dying nixies, and so-so nixies, so I'm really surprised anything in the "body-bag" of dead ones actually glowed. Unless perhaps the zap from the microwave oven did something to the internal metal. I have some more experimenting to do. On Thursday, December 10, 2020 at 4:57:40 PM UTC-8 Chuck wrote: Burroughs 6844A is domed not flat. I also have some National Electronics NL-6844A tubes. Frankly, I have had much better luck with the National Electronics brand. This recently purchased batch of (8) Burroughs 6844A tubes is a bad batch. The boxes all are stamped MAR 4 1968. The tubes themselves are date-coded 6750 F20. In white letters stenciled on the glass: "Burroughs 6844A NIXIE". The test I did was that the anode got connected to +170 volts DC through a 15k resistor. Then the digit cathodes were selectively grounded to the negative side of that power supply. On all (8) of these Burroughs tubes, most of what is seen is an intense glow concentrated around the tiny internal wires which connect the digit cathodes of the stack, to the pins. These tiny wires pass closely to the outside of the Anode casing which surrounds the digit stack. The glow strikes in the wrong place. The glow is around the lead wires instead of being around the digits. I am very confident from the way these tubes were in those boxes, that only one of the batch had even ever been out of the box. So I am curious what causes the glowing lead wires. Chuck -- 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 neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/df3e7d5c-f568-4f9b-bde3-ac107aa0fff3n%40googlegroups.com. -- 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 neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/202012110655443.SM46447%40ADT-IM1.