MY New Nixie Bliss

[Chiefish]

After having had my first nixie tube clock built by someone else, I absolutly love it, I decided, after hearing what Jac and John had to say about it, that I would build one myself With the chip collector in mind. I tried to merge my love for vintage chips and my new found love for nixie clocks into one big blissful experiment.

I bought a kit off of ebay that supplies you with all you need to build the clock, except for the tubes themselves. After waiting a couple of weeks to get everything together for it I started building. The kit looked very intimidating at first, but came with pretty easy to understand illustrated instructions and the PCB boards were all marked clearly as to what componant went where.
So I started to solder away at all those little resisters and diodes and whatever else is in here, including a pic microcontroller, like Jac had suggested. It took me a good two weeks of off and on soldering and really taking my time so I didnt use too much solder and burn up any circuts or accidently solder something where it shouldnt go.

Once I got it all together and working I started digging around in my trade boxes for some nice chips and stuff to use in the making of the enclosure for it , I came up with a couple nice wafers and a bunch of nice chips to use, I built the case out of wood and surrounded it in the good ol whites.

As a safety measure I have made sure no fingers can get into any of the circutry and the only thig accessable from the outside without taking the case apart are the buttons needed for setting the congurations and the power plug recepticle. This clock also does not use mains power but instead a 12V dc supply with stepup . These pics are the results. I must admit it has been very fun trying somthing like this for the first time ever.

The first pic I used a flash just to show how nice the wafers look when they catch the lighting at the nice angles the rest were with normal ambient lighting. The tubes I used in this are very large compared to the first clock I got. You can see them anywhere in the room even from a great angle at the sides.

[doccybrown]

I think that housing is a matter of taste but I
guess I could get accustomed to it lol
Excellent tubes!
My inner conflict is the usage of uncommon chips
which should not be "abused" for things like
that but this is my own opinion.
Anyway it is very unique and a good idea
for recycling nice chips you have many of!

[D.8080]

"I can see all the circuits" - Bender, Futurama. Talking about robot porn.

[Chiefish]

[magictom]

Great job Chiefish, I especially like the use of C4004s along the edges LOL

[mvortikar]

[johnorun]

Chiefish, it's an awesome work of art! Congrats on such a nice first project.

I bet you could sell these for lots on Ebay!
I guess all the metal chip surfaces are safely shielded from any current?

Amazingly useful too. Does your wife like your hobby better now?

[johnorun]

You got me so inspired that I'd like to try making a clock with these 5 Burroughs tubes I got a year ago.

Are your instructions shareable?

[Chiefish]

Wow cool looking tubes, But I doubt the instructions that I used will help with this project, as they are for a prefabed printed circut board with exact and preplanned circuts. However you might be able to get some help from some others online to get these going. Refer to the fist thread I had a while back where Jac had listed some great sites to get started with learning about this stuff. I think it would take more than what I had to do to make these tubes work , It looks like you have the driver chips on that board already so you might just have to come up with a power supply and a controller chip , But I am just a rookie so I could be talking out my A$$ right now. I know there are quite a bit of things to take into account when trying to power up and control them.

[johnorun]

I should delay this project until I get my numerousdisplay chips mounted and working on a breadboard, with help from several members here, of course.

[D.8080]

I sense some great projects coming to life.

Now I love nixie tubes

[CPUShack]

thats pretty dang cool lookin

[Windmiller]

Seriously awesome!!!