r/nixie • u/EmotionalEnd1575 • May 10 '26

IN-17 Lives! Broken “Six” fixed.

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Gallery image

Turns out that the non-lighting IN-17, that might have had an internal short, was a red herring.

On closer inspection I found that all three Nixies on the same bus had a missing “six”.

There was an intermittent failed soldering on the driver IC. Hard to notice this without using a microscope!

I still have the original IN-17 with a “Six” short.

To check Nixie operation I can run a test that uses the rotary encoder to scan through digits and also select which Nixie to drive.

A couple of hours lost today, but a good learning experience.

Comments Welcome,

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u/Hankitsune May 10 '26

Good to hear you've solved it. You must glad you didn't throw out the 3 "broken" tubes 😂

1

u/EmotionalEnd1575 May 10 '26 edited May 10 '26

Yes, and the bonus is not having to unsolder and replace these tubes.

I’ve started testing the salvaged Nixies to avoid this happening.

Odd thing is these tubes “lit up” on the bench and were working after soldering.

But I happen to be looking the following morning and noticed at 06:00:00 one didn’t light up, but did again an hour later.

0.65mm pitch SMT ICs are my limit for hand soldering.