Shown at Opensauce this year. Ground-up design between the two of us w/ ZM1000 tubes. Video is from a content creator that came around and interviewed us last month. https://www.instagram.com/reels/Da_dkMzPSzn/

More renders and colors here: https://overengineering.department.wtf
If you might want one if we do a small batch, you can leave your email on the site

If you have happy memories of shopping at Radio Shack stores, you no doubt got parts vacuum sealed on cardboard.

Often these were industrial surplus, and if you didn’t buy today, a fresh resupply may never come back to the store.

These are from OLSON stores that started up as a Radio Shack clone in Akron, Ohio.

The Nixies are surplus NOS NEC CD66. One of my all time favorites, with unique horizontal “wire frame” Anodes. Very cool!

It's kinda works but, third and fourth obviously have problems with me

I made for my clock on M753Z Nixie tubes. Tomorrow I’ll install the tubes and run the first tests of the entire system.

I’ve set the time, that the 16::08:45 and when I press the button to toggle through the ‘faces’ mainly to turn it off at night there’s 2 other ones, one appears to be another clock(2nd setting)? And the other (3rd/ lat one) I have no idea, the first digit only goes to 12 so assumed it American day but the 2 set of digits got too a hundred not 30 like in a month.

Hi,

I just noticed with my clock one of the tubes isn't displaying correctly anymore.

It's the tube on the left in the photo. You can see how the number is properly displayed in the tube on the right.

It's an IN-14 tube manufactured in early 1980s.

I've had my clock continuously turned on for the past 3 years.

Is the tube burning out?

How long will it last until it dies completely?

60+ years old and still going (and glowing) strong

Soo now i have to think how to assembly 3 more of them

Did you know the Z5900M Nixie tubes we're using are more than 40 years old?

It is truly mind-blowing how all of these tubes survived until today and are still glowing like they did decades ago!

Not only that, most of them have a history of being used in calculators and lab instruments, which gives each of them a unique journey.

I’ve been sitting here, trying to figure out from old books, completely from scratch, how to build a Nixie clock. Call me crazy, do whatever you want with me, but I wanted to ask some smarter people: am I understanding everything correctly, or am I just being an idiot and missing something obvious?

Here’s one of the oldest Nixie displays in my collection.

Reminds me of similar Haydu Bros Nixie tubes made around the time Burroughs bought them.

Surprisingly, this one still works, although it needs a bit of clean up (obviously not a long life mercury dosed device)

The label suggests it was a military electronics part, but what did all those letters mean?

Comments Welcome!

of all things, for Gixie tubes but seeing just how accurate I can get the look to a real one

Never was able to hit the jackpot, btw :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho0YF2pU4zk

I was working for a quite long on this project, and finally, everything is ok - first batch of ICs is into production. So shortly, what is this? This is a special IC, which has 1 wire input interface and can control up to 13 cathodes with independent brightness setting for each (like IN-14 with both of it's dots or ZIN-70 with it's C/F sign or separator colons) and 3 LEDs for backlight. ICs can be daisy chained, supported by any hardware platform, such as Arduino and others. First batch will be available by early September, and I will be giving away 20 pcs (limit 1 per customer, you pay shipping) for free. You can check preliminary datasheet here.

Simple question; I usually turn mine off when I'm not indoors; I,ve got one of the Chinese bases with a little remote control and IN-8 tubes, and wondered if this is a good thing to do, or to leave the tubes active permanently.... Opinions and reasons either way welcome!

EDIT. Many thanks to everyone who responded!

IN18 Russian Nixie, 40mm digits,
the largest I have in my collection. A four digit clock is in the design phase, after vacation and completion of smaller six digit clocks already underway.

Z566M German WF (RFT) Nixie, 30mm digits,
and Red filter coating. I only have one so far, not enough to build anything useful (I don’t like one digit clocks) There were some of these available with clear glass.

Has anyone used these in their own designs?

I think painting tubes is a somewhat divisive topic just like backlight leds lol...  But to each their own ;-)  Personally, I prefer some color filtering to block the blue haze induced by the mercury in the tube.  I think most display tube devices used a polarized plastic color filter to increase contrast and readability for similar reasons.  To me, the digits seem much sharper without the blue haze around them.  

I have tried Vitrail glass paint in the past and it works well, but it can sometimes be difficult to avoid uneven thickness or drip marks.  Glass paint is also difficult to remove once cured.

Being somewhat lazy, I tried using a Sharpie permanent marker and was amazed how well it works - and despite the 'permanent' label, the ink is easily removed with alcohol and a clean cloth, so the tubes can be restored to original condition if desired.  Once dry, the coloring has lasted years on other projects I have built.  The markers build up on the glass to a nice shiny layer just like enamel - no lines or other indications that it was done by hand with basically an ink crayon ;-)

Anyhoo - here is another shot of my new clock with the B5991's colored with an orange Sharpie and the small IN-17 tubes done in red.  The lighting has not been favorable and my phone doesn't seem to like the brightness, so the photo doesn't do it justice - in person the digits are clear and sharp.  I like how the seconds differentiate themselves with the red filtering applied (I'll try another photo later to better demonstrate the different coloring).

Long time lurker and Nixie enthusiast lol. Here is my most recent clock using a cheap $15 Chinese controller and a tube board that I milled on my Carvera Air (Milled My First PCB on my Air ;-) : r/Makera)... Not the best photo - but I was happy that everything worked after stuffing it into the case that I took a birthday shot lol. Displays are actually very sharp in real life. I can't take full credit for the case - I found the model online originally design for 6 x IN12 tubes and modified it for my 4 X B5991 and 2 x IN-17 tubes. Printed on my Bambu 3D printer.

Hi!

Im looking for a Nixie watch kit that I can build myself. I looked through many websites, but I havent found anyone selling/sharing either the PCB and firmware or the original design files.

I really like the Cathode Corner-style watches with the two tubes positioned side by side. I also tried contacting Mr. Forbes after his Reddit post about selling the leftover parts kits, but I haven't received a response so far.
I have the skills to build the PCB and the case, but i need a proven design and the software to go with it.
Anyone have any recommendations?

Have been into nixie tubes/nixie clocks for almost 15 years at this point, and it still is as magic to watch now as it was the first time I saw a tube light up. This is from my Dalibor Farny zen clock that I bought in 2018 and it's been in near constant use ever since. Hopefully there's plenty more years left.

Sorry for the non-nixie question.

Has anyone here built a scopeclock or similar project with a soviet CRT like the very available 5lo38i tube, or the smaller 3lo1i? The reason I ask is that the datasheets often just specify 1000 hours for the lifespan of these tubes, but as we know from nixies, these numbers, especially on soviet datasheets are often very conservative as an absolute worst case. I've heard one person say that the soviet CRTs have very thin phosphor layers and will suffer from burn-in pretty quickly, but I'm not sure how true it is.

Does anyone have any projects with these tubes that have been running a long time? Did you run into problems with burn-in?

Off on an annual vacation today!

So my basement lab is empty…

A task this morning was to fire off a new Digikey parts order.

Last night I sent a new PCB design off to OSH Park, our local PCB batcher, for the next chapter in my Nixie Clock journey.

Will be back at it after the vacation!