Did you already try UV-LED’s? Banggood and Ali sell COB-chips up to 365nm 
wavelength 10 to 50W power and also a 365nm cut-of filter. That gives you the 
advantage of no visible light for small money, However, you don’t need the full 
power of a 10W COB-chip of course, what saves power if used with a lower current

 

Cheers,

eric.

 

Van: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Namens 
Pieter-Tjerk de Boer
Verzonden: zondag 2 mei 2021 21:51
Aan: neonixie-l
Onderwerp: [neonixie-l] Re: nixie clock using trigger tubes

 

I tried this back when building my NE-2 ring-counter based clock, and there it 
didn't work. The red neon light simply didn't help the striking process, in 
contrast to blue light.

Note that we're talking about two totally different processes here. The light 
emitted by the neon gas has a wavelength (colour) determined by the physical 
properties of the neon atoms, while the light needed to help the striking 
process must have photons with sufficiently high energy (sufficiently blue 
colour) to kick an electron loose from the electrodes, which depends on the 
physical properties of the electrode material.

 

Regards,

  Pieter-Tjerk

 

On Sunday, May 2, 2021 at 2:09:23 PM UTC+2 Dekatron42 wrote:

Have you made any experiments with putting them closer to each other so that 
the one that is lit always shines on the next one in turn to light up - this 
would need an extra tube at the first position connected to the last tube so 
that it would trigger at the same time and so that there would be some glow on 
the first tube when the last one is lit, or you'll have to put them in a proper 
circle so that there is always glow falling on the next tube in turn.

 

/Martin

 

On Sunday, 2 May 2021 at 13:59:44 UTC+2 Mike Mitchell wrote:

I've built two clocks out of the MTX-90 tubes, following Pieter-Tjerk de Boer's 
schematic.  The longest I've gotten one to run is about a week, at which point 
I have to change out tubes.  The clock runs fine in the daylight but some 
random tube will stop firing in the dark.  I'm thinking about sprinkling some 
blue or green "neon" tubes throughout the clock just to provide some extra 
photons.  Something like these:  
https://www.amazon.com/Othmro-Pieces-6x16mm-Bright-Indicator/dp/B07WFNSKSM/

I do have some near-UV LEDs (400nm) but the clock is line powered and I don't 
really have space for a buck converter.  I hate to drop nearly 300 volts across 
a resistor just to light a string of LEDs.

 

Does anyone have any other ideas?

 

Thanks!

Mike

 

 

On Thursday, December 31, 2020 at 8:21:16 AM UTC-5 Pieter-Tjerk de Boer wrote:

Yes, at first I tried to use them as proper trigger tubes, in multiple ways, 
but I couldn't find or come up with a circuit that worked reliably over a range 
of supply voltages (which is also an indication for how robust the circuit is 
for variations of the tube properties). So I went back to the neon tube counter 
circuit, and found that to work more robustly, thanks to the very large 
difference between striking and maintaining voltage of these tubes. Somehow, 
this seems "wrong", 

as the trigger electrodes are there precisely to make this kind of circuits 
easier, but...

 

Regards,

   Pieter-Tjerk

 

On Thursday, December 31, 2020 at 12:00:07 PM UTC+1 Dekatron42 wrote:

Really nice!

 

Thanks for sharing the circuit diagram!

 

Did you try to use them as proper trigger tubes and not just as neon tubes?

 

/Martin

 

On Thursday, 24 December 2020 at 19:13:10 UTC+1 Pieter-Tjerk de Boer wrote:

 

I recently completed a nixie clock without any transistors, microcontrollers or 
other ICs, instead using trigger tubes to implement the digital counters:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3PBJUcKeoo

Actually, I'm not even using the 'trigger' function of these tubes, they are 
just used as neon lamps with a large difference between strike and maintaining 
voltage. It's this difference which allows one to build counters with them. 
I'll publish a more detailed description on my website later on.

Some may know that I built a similar clock over ten years ago:
  http://pa3fwm.nl/projects/neonclock/
That clock used regular NE-2 style neon lamps for the logic; unfortunately it 
became unreliable, as the lamps' properties changed with time. I hope the new 
clock will turn out to be more reliable...

Regards,
  Pieter-Tjerk

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