IN-18 Questions

[Frudel]

Hello group, i newly found my love Nixies/ Numitrons and Dektatrons , i come from germany and i tried to build my first clock ( a kit).
Can you give me a hint about IN-18 tubes which manufactury date to buy , i have the choice between 1979 and 1988 the seller told me that the 1979 look better , any idea why?

The durability of the tubes depents on the production date?
My english could be better ..... - less practise!

Thank you greets from germany
Markus

[gregebert]

Welcome! 

My IN-18 clock has 14 tubes.  One of them is from 1977, and the others are from 1989. I cant see any difference in their appearance. They have been running for just over 2 years and I have no problems with any of them. In my opinion, the IN-18 is the best-value in terms of cost vs size.

I once read somewhere that IN-18  tubes built in 1982 and 1986 had some reliability problems, but I can't remember where I saw that. I know that my tubes built in 1989 have soft pins that have mild surface corrosion (it seems harmless) and are easily bent, whereas the 1977 tube has stiffer pins that have a corrosion-resistant finish.

I dont know who your seller is, but since you are in Germany, I'm guessing it could be Dieter. If it is, follow his advice on which tube to use.

[Frudel]

No its a ebay seller from russia with good reputations , 

Do you have a picture of that clock , that makes me curious.

[gregebert]

Here's a bad picture. I've never been able to take a good picture of any of my nixie clocks.

There are 8 tubes for the date, in MM.DD.YYYY format, and 6 for the time in HH:MM:SS format

The PCB is my own design, and has sockets for 6 tubes. I cascaded 3 to allow up to 18 tubes, but I only use 14

The clock is controlled by an FPGA, and there is a DS3232 realtime clock for handling the time. It's accurate to a few seconds per year.

This clock was inspired by the movie "Tomorrowland", and there are a few scenes where two 6-tube IN-18 clocks are shown. My wife really liked it, so I built this one as a gift to her.

On the far left is a box with the on/off switch made from a tomorrowland souvenir pin. On the right side are 4 indicator lights (1960's era colored-glass dome incandescent) and switches to set the time/date. The colons flash at a 0.5 Hz rate.

The entire clock is about 1 meter wide.

The tubes for the date are basically static, so I run a depoisoning routine every night from 11PM to midnight, then the clock shuts down until someone presses  the button to turn it on in the morning.

If you look closely, you can see the '5' digit has a slight hint of poisoning at the bottom; it has not worsened over the past 6 months so I have not tried to cleanse it with high-current.

Someday I will replace the FPGA with a Raspberry Pi so I wont need to set the time when daylight savings time starts/end.

[Frudel]

 

Hello , need the time to find an watch the film Tomorrowland (  A World Beyond ) , i saw the film in 2016 but i could not remember

the big nixie clock. ( what a sin )

Thank you for the picture.

I bought 2 tubes one 1979 the other 1988 to see if there is a difference.

Greets

Markus