Plasma Globe Substitute

[threeneurons]

Last week, I went to the TRW Swapmeet. I met a pair of our neon buddies, Westdave, and Gary, at one of vendor booths. The vendor had a bunch of element discharge tubes. Not the regular noble gas tubes, like neon or helium, but of mostly vaporized metal, gold, mercury ... He wanted $25 a piece for them. Dave and Gary picked up a couple each. Me, being a cheap SOB, and seeing they weren't dekatrons, passed. Later at Gary's house, we wanted to light them up. Gary use to have a plasma globe. If you stick a nixie tube near it, the tube would glow. But it had been broken, and he thrown it out. No big deal, he has a tesla coil in the garage. Again, no go, since it was dismantled, and he was in the middle rebuilding it. No glow joy, that day.

Well I threw together this little toy, to throw out a few KV of AC, to make a few ions:

The circuit, is pretty simple. It just my nixie supply circuit, adjusted to output 300VDC But instead of using a simple coil, I used a transformer. The primary side, makes a 300Vpp pulse. The transformer has a ~20:1 turns ratio. 16 turns on the primary, and a tad over 300 on the secondary. The key was isolate not only the primary from secondary,but successive layers of the secondary. They maybe more kapton tape on it than wire !

The tubes are not plugged into a socket, but on a conductive platform (wire mesh), that's hooked up to HV. That green wire hanging out, is also the HV. Touch a gas filled tube to it, and it will lite up ! It's also portable. I powered it from a 12VDC source, I often drag along with me.

[gregebert]

I have a plasma globe from 1985 (Eye of the Storm), and although it still works nicely, I get pretty weak glowing in nixies, etc. After all these years I still havn't placed a wire loop on my scope to look at the frequency & waveform, but I can hear it in the 10-12kHz range. 

What frequency are you running ?

[Quixotic Nixotic]

On 5 Mar 2015, at 20:04, gregebert wrote:

I have a plasma globe from 1985 (Eye of the Storm)...

A plasma ball worked well for me when I bought a binload of pinball displays and wanted to test them out and wanted to see which ones still had gas.

I'd still find it useful if my son hadn't dropped the plasma ball. I'd stolen it from him in the first place, so I couldn't really complain.

  

John S

[JohnK]

GREEN for a voltage wire?

 

What is the first tube's number?

 

John K

[PS  nice toy.]

----- Original Message -----

From: 'threeneurons' via neonixie-l

To: neoni...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Friday, March 06, 2015 5:07 AM

Subject: [neonixie-l] Plasma Globe Substitute

Last week, I went to the TRW Swapmeet. I met a pair of our neon buddies, Westdave, and Gary, at one of vendor booths. The vendor had a bunch of element discharge tubes. Not the regular noble gas tubes, like neon or helium, but of mostly vaporized metal, gold, mercury ... He wanted $25 a piece for them. Dave and Gary picked up a couple each. Me, being a cheap SOB, and seeing they weren't dekatrons, passed. Later at Gary's house, we wanted to light them up. Gary use to have a plasma globe. If you stick a nixie tube near it, the tube would glow. But it had been broken, and he thrown it out. No big deal, he has a tesla coil in the garage. Again, no go, since it was dismantled, and he was in the middle rebuilding it. No glow joy, that day.

Well I threw together this little toy, to throw out a few KV of AC, to make a few ions:

The circuit, is pretty simple. It just my nixie supply circuit, adjusted to output 300VDC But instead of using a simple coil, I used a transformer. The primary side, makes a 300Vpp pulse. The transformer has a ~20:1 turns ratio. 16 turns on the primary, and a tad over 300 on the secondary. The key was isolate not only the primary from secondary,but successive layers of the secondary. They maybe more kapton tape on it than wire !

The tubes are not plugged into a socket, but on a conductive platform (wire mesh), that's hooked up to HV. That green wire hanging out, is also the HV. Touch a gas filled tube to it, and it will lite up ! It's also portable. I powered it from a 12VDC source, I often drag along with me.

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[Nick]

Neat!

I use a Voltarc ELT (electronic lamp tester) normally used to test fluorescent tubes in situ.

It's a cool unit and fits neatly in a pocket...

Nick

[threeneurons]

That wire has the HV on it, too. The other side of the secondary is tied low thru an NE-2.

That's a BH rectifier tube in the 1st photo.

[JohnK]

I was querying the choice of colour for a wire that has voltage. In this
part of the world Green is associated with earth/ground. [Although
Green/Yellow has overtaken it.]

John K
Australia

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[threeneurons]

Here's a schematic, and guide to winding the transformer:

and a video of two tubes hooked up, at the same time, but acting like a flip-flop:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2itasi_plasma-generator-1_tech

On Thursday, March 5, 2015 at 5:33:03 PM UTC-8, johnk wrote:

I was querying the choice of colour for a wire that has voltage. In this
part of the world Green is associated with earth/ground. [Although
Green/Yellow has overtaken it.]

John K
Australia

 Its just the only #24 solid wire I have.

[Charles MacDonald]

On 15-03-06 06:24 AM, Quixotic Nixotic wrote:

> I think it qualifies as art.

Maybe, but it definitely qualifies as a warranty claim.


--
Charles MacDonald Stittsville Ontario
cm...@zeusprune.ca Just Beyond the Fringe
http://Charles.MacDonald.org/tubes
No Microsoft Products were used in sending this e-mail.

[Instrument Resources of America]

Or shipping damage. Ira

[threeneurons]

A few months ago, at the TRW swapmeet, we got some hollow cathode tubes. Had nothing to light them up with, so I made this circuit. A couple of days ago, Dave gave me one of his tubes. I had since added an octal socket, so I plugged in the tube and here's a photo:

From further experiments, I found that hollow cathode (spectral reference) tubes need only ~300V to strike. The sustain voltage is ~250V. Max current 25mA, as stated on Varian box.