6300HV Kickstarter launching in 11 days

[Aiden Fang]

Hi, all,

As promised, here is the heads up about Yan's brand new NCH6300HV Nixie tube power booster. 

The Kickstarter campaign is launching in 11 days. So please sign up at the pre-sale page to stay in the loop: 

https://nch6300hv.omnixie.com

Thank you!

[Nicholas Stock]

Amazing! Right, who's going to be the first person to make a 16 digit IN18 clock then!!!! :) I have one with 15 tubes (not IN18), but a 16 digit IN18 clock would make a statement.....

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[Aiden Fang]

Cannot wait to see how creative people can become out there ;)

[Kevin A.]

That transformer it uses is very interesting. I'd be curious to know the specs on it (min. inductance, ratio, primary peak current, withstand rating). 

[newxito]

The transformer is the "secret sauce" :-)

Looking forward to make a project with this booster

[Paul Andrews]

Yep. Its all about the transformer, until it isn't. That's the hardest part about rolling your own power supply.

[Dekatron42]

Soon you might not see them anymore: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02721-7 , just kidding - it will require some more breakthroughs before they have a practical component, but it would be nice if they could get smaller......

/Martin

[gregebert]

Theoretically, there's no reason why switched capacitors cant be used instead of inductors for voltage multiplication. Charge-pumps were used on a lot of IC's back in the 1980's before everything went to CMOS, notably DRAMs, that operated from a single supply-voltage. Some of you may remember the 4116 had three supply voltages, but the next-generation 4164 was 5V-only. Those were exciting times when DRAMs went from 16Kx1 to 64Kx1.......

Boosting 12V to 200V for a nixie supply without an inductor is certainly possible, but it's not very practical.

[Robert G. Schaffrath]

I always found inductors to be the bane of electronics projects. Resistors, capacitors and other discrete components were always readily available in standard values but inductors were that odd item that you often wound up having wind yourself on a core that itself was difficult to obtain. Something along the lines of "wind 10 turns of #18 Teflon coated wire on an Acme T128 core, spacing the turns 2mm apart" or something just as annoying.

Back in the early 1980's my Electrical Engineering class took a field trip to the Ferroxcube plant in Saugerties, NY to see how inductors were made. It was fascinating to watch and they were of course very pro-inductor. Their catalog had a wide variety of components. But they were definitely an item you could not easily buy in single quantities off the shelf from RadioShack or other vendors of that era.

[gregebert]

Inductance is one of those things where you have a hard time dealing with it when you dont want it, and when you *do* want it, it doesn't always work as expected due to saturation and other losses.

On top of that, it's difficult to model all of the aspects of coupled inductors (transformers) in SPICE simulations, so you always end up doing a lot of bench work getting these things to work correctly.

Every project I've worked on using inductors in power applications works great at low/zero load, and gets challenging trying to get it up to full load.

[Aiden Fang]

Obviously you guys are veterans ;)

[gregebert]

I've picked-up a few "war-wounds" over the years.....

My favorite inductor story is about a 3-phase converter I built in college to run some BIG computer equipment I bought in 1983, notably vacuum-column tape drives. After a few failures (SCR-based design, rotating motor-armature) I went to big NPN power darlingtons (400V MOSFETs were expensive, and 1000V NPNs were readily available).

So I got the thing running, loaded-up a tape, and was delighted to see it going forward, backward, and very-fast rewind. I needed to know what would happen if  SoCal Edison had a surprise blackout, so I yanked the power and KABOOM! . One of the transistors exploded because it had a direct-short across a 340V supply, with 30,000uF of capacitors. The energy stored in 10 inches of wire destroyed a second transistor. The 3rd one survived.

[Richard Scales]

Aiden, can you post details of footprint / dimensions / pin locations ?

Are the connections in the same position as on NCH6100HV with just a shorter board?

 - Richard

[Aiden Fang]

Richard,

Yes, the NCH6300HV is the drop in replacement for 6100HV. One thing to note is that, the SHDN (output enable pin) should be connected to Vin (pull HIGH) in order to enable the HV output.

Here is the drawing of these two power modules. The 6300 is narrower than 6100 by 7mm (0.27").

[Aiden Fang]

Also want to add that, the SHUTDOWN pin on 6300 behaves the opposite way compared to 6100. On 6100, pulling SHDN down to LOW enables the HV output.

So on the new 6300, leaving the SHDN pin floating will keep the HV output in off state.

[Richard Scales]

Hello,

Is it launched? No email received after registering and cannot find on Kickstarter?

On Friday, 23 October 2020 22:57:23 UTC+1, Aiden Fang wrote:

[Aiden Fang]

Richard,

Thank you for checking. The campaign was submitted for review a few days ago. It should go live later today or tomorrow.

I'll keep you in the loop.

Best,

Aiden

[Aiden Fang]

Not yet. Still under review by KS. Should go live soon. 

I’ll update the post then. 

Warm regards,

Aiden

On Nov 3, 2020, at 11:54 PM, Richard Scales <ric...@scalesweb.co.uk> wrote:



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[John Snow]

It's gone live, there's still super early-bird 40% off pledges avalible for those interested.

-John

[Aiden Fang]

Thank you John for the shout out ;)

Here is the KS link:

https://nixie.ai/ks6300gg

Also, help us spread the words and you can get 10% commission😎

https://nch6300hv.kickbooster.me/boost

[Max DN]

Aidan, the kickstarter link is not working any longer, at least for me. It seemed fine a few hours ago.

Do you have any tests on efficiency at 3.7V li-on battery input and 170V 1mA / 2mA and 4mA? 

Would you have any suggestions on how this is even possible: 7 years ago, 85% efficiency with a CR1216 battery (which I believe can provide max 25mA).

[Jon Jackson]

It is redirecting for me.

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/8dee3338-4647-43e0-869b-0b81fffc54e2n%40googlegroups.com.

[Max DN]

Yeah, on my computer it's redirecting me but then I get...

This page isn’t working

www.kickstarter.com is currently unable to handle this request.

On my phone it works fine. Odd.

[Aiden Fang]

I tested them on Safari and Google Chrome, and both work.

Here is the direct (long) link, and should always work.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/omnixie/nch6300hv-powering-up-your-nixie-tubes-and-magic-eye-w-ease

Thanks.

[Aiden Fang]

Yan and I just designed a new Nixie tube Driver Board to drive 4 Nixie tubes. Added it as a stretch goal on kickstarter. Let's see how it goes  ;-)

A bit more details:

• 5x 74HC595 (5x8=40 I/O, perfect for 4 tubes); static drive
  
• Can also drive 2 colons
  
• Most of the components are surface mount done by fab. Only a handful are through holes for hand soldering.
  
• SPI interface, can talk to Arduino or other MCU
  
• 4x wire-to-board connectors included
  
• As always, gold-plated PCBA
  
• Need NCH6300HV for 170V
• Arduino lib in development.
  

An example : All those panel mount parts included