F9020 Nixies

[Raymond Koonce]

I have an acquaintance who is looking for some F9020 Nixies to repair a vintage Patek Philippe clock. It has 7 tubes and he would like to find enough of the tubes to have a spare set or two. Any ideas/sources?  Cost is not a big issue.

TIA

Raymond

[Nick]

Hah!

Probably not a chance. I have a couple, but I've seen almost none come up for auction in 15 years.

A member here did come across a cache of them some years ago, but I believe they all sold (for a LOT of money).

I'd love to be proved wrong, but finding a set is likely to be impossible, unless you're extremely rich (likely to be 500 - 1,000 euros / tube).

Nick

[Nicholas Stock]

Yep, you're not the only one on the lookout for those beauties...;-)

On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 8:13 AM, Nick <ni...@desmith.net> wrote:

Hah!

Probably not a chance. I have a couple, but I've seen almost none come up for auction in 15 years.

A member here did come across a cache of them some years ago, but I believe they all sold (for a LOT of money).

Nick

On Monday, 20 July 2015 15:43:17 UTC+1, Raymond Koonce wrote:

I have an acquaintance who is looking for some F9020 Nixies to repair a vintage Patek Philippe clock. It has 7 tubes and he would like to find enough of the tubes to have a spare set or two. Any ideas/sources?  Cost is not a big issue.

TIA

Raymond

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[Terry S]

Can you post pictures of the clock?

 

Terry

[Raymond Koonce]

Thanks for the reply.  That's sort of what I expected, but I thought this would be a good place to look.  The interested party is in the antiques business and has some *very* expensive Patek Philippe clocks, as you can see here:

http://www.rauantiques.com/search/?start=0&q=patek%20philippe&sort=PRICE+desc

They have converted the Nixie clock (not shown on the website) to use large segmented LED displays for the numerals.  The oddball shape of the tubes prevents using any other type of tube.

On Monday, July 20, 2015 at 9:43:17 AM UTC-5, Raymond Koonce wrote:

[Raymond Koonce]

Sorry, I only have a fuzzy cell phone photo that doesn't do it justice.

[Nick]

On Monday, 20 July 2015 16:33:13 UTC+1, Terry S wrote:

Can you post pictures of the clock?

Good plan! If it has 7 tubes, you'll probably need at least 10,000 euros to get another set - they are rarer than CD47s - a LOT rarer.

However, I doubt that there are that many in circulation world-wide - they were never made in quantity. 

Nick

[jb-electronics]

Hey Raymond,

[...] Cost is not a big issue.

is probably a little bit against the collector's spirit. Offering huge amounts of money never made a true collector sell his gems... ;-)

Cheers
Jens

TIA

Raymond

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[Nick]

There has been a suggestion in the past that these tubes were made by CSF specifically for Patek and possibly Omega - they were certainly never in mass production.

I have an idea though - we have a member here who can actually MAKE new tubes - Dalibor Farny - a real craftsman. If cost is really not an object, I suspect he could make you new ones.

If you go down that route, we'd all love to see the results !

Nick

[Raymond Koonce]

10K Euro would probably not be out of the question for this person.  I'd just like to be able to find some for him.

[Raymond Koonce]

I'm emailing Dalibor right now.  Maybe he can help.

[gregebert]

Posting a link to the datasheet: http://www.jb-electronics.de/html/elektronik/nixies/n_f9020aa.htm

Very unusual tube because it's flat-ish, and all pins are inline rather than a circular footprint. Unfortunate these were not more common because they have obvious space-saving advantages over round tubes with the same digit-size, not to mention their astonishing 55mm digit height.

I wonder if these were intended to replace edge-lit numeric displays; they have a similar form-factors.

[threeneurons]

I have a dud of one of those. It would be great if it had gas and worked, but no such luck. If it was working, it would be worth a lot of money. Mine is just a non-working paper weight.

[gregebert]

Any obvious signs why your F9020 is dead ? If there is an inherent manufacturing problem with this tube, perhaps due to it's unconventional shape, it could explain why they are so rare. There were probably billions of round vacuum tubes produced so I'm sure all the obscure problems were solved for that style.

Unless you have a pile of dead ones, I wouldn't risk trying to re-gas yours. Even as a paperweight it's a treasure.

I have this nagging fear (nightmare ?) that one day my tubes start dying-off, even the ones I stockpiled as replacements.

[Dalibor]

Hi, try touching CRT monitor or plasma globe with the dud tube. If there is neon, it will glow orange inside. Usually the bad tubes are leaky and don't glow or the glow is a bit purple - sign of a bit of air sucked inside. If this is the cause, the leaky place would have to be sealed and the tube opened and refilled. All nixies I've seen were made from soft glass - very likely to crack during sealing of the refill tubing.

[Alex]

Over the years I have been known to add a few too many buttons or switches to designs, but I would struggle to come up with half the number Patek managed to on some of those clocks. Amazing pieces of over complication...

[threeneurons]

Done that. No shortage of high voltage here. No glow ... no gas ...no joy. The tube is stashed in a safe area.