White "power"in contacts

[Che Tube]

hi Everyone,

first of all, thank you for this group, as a guy that recently got the "Nixie-phobia Syndrome", I do appreciate this forum :)

well, i bought some IN-1 and they came with some white "power"in contacts, see photos in attachment for better understanding, do you know any easy way to remove this powder?

thank you,

Che

[Terry S]

I'd take a toothbrush and some baking soda in water and clean them up.... gently ... and let them air dry. Looks like mineral deposits from sitting in water.

Terry

[greg...@hotmail.com]

Be aware the tube itself is sealed, so even if they were submerged in water they should be fine. Whatever the contaminant is, I can't see any obvious signs of corrosion on the pins.

I see these are IN-1 tubes. Be warned: They are very unreliable; see my posting about this from last year for more details. After a few hundred hours of continuous operation I was getting cathodes shorting to eachother inside the tube. It was so bad that my big clock with 15 tubes had a failure every few days.

After replacing the IN-1 (NH-1) tubes with Burroughs 6091's, I have not had a single failure. This particular clock has been running for over 9 months now, which means I have accumulated about 100,000 hours of tube-time. 

[Tidak Ada]

 

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From: neoni...@googlegroups.com [mailto:neoni...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of greg...@hotmail.com
Sent: maandag 21 april 2014 17:58
To: neoni...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [neonixie-l] Re: White "power"in contacts

After replacing the IN-1 (NH-1) tubes with Burroughs 6091's, I have not had a single failure. This particular clock has been running for over 9 months now, which means I have accumulated about 100,000 hours of tube-time. 

For me is that about 6590 hours.... (30.5days × 9 months × 24hours = 6588 hours)

 

eric

[greg...@hotmail.com]

While it's true that each tube has only been operating about 7000 hours, the fact that 15 out of 15 are still running is statistically important. Failure-rates are computed based on testing of multiple devices.

Let's suppose 1 of my 15 tubes failed after 5000 hours. The failure-rate would not be 1 failure per 5000 hours; it would be 9.7 failures per million hours based on this calculation:

1/(5000+14*7000).

Thankfully, all of the tubes are still running. But I still dont have any data telling me how long they are expected to last. The information in my Burroughs datasheet suggests a failure rate of about 4 per ten-million hours for 5031 tubes; I wish I had that info for 5092's and 6091's..

Interestingly, I have a few 5031's in my collection and some of them have partially-illuminated cathodes. They have not responded to attempts to 'clean' them with higher current.

None of my 5092s or 6091s show any sign of wearout. So, it's a mystery to me how long they will last....