One more from the depths.... what would you do.

[Kerry Borgne]

 Picked this up at a flea market a couple of years ago. Didn't pay much for it. It's in like new, unused condition. My original intent was to part it, mostly for the Nixies but I was
wondering what you guys would do with it.....Might make an interesting clock...? (or maybe I should keep it for a collectable ? )

Kerry

[gregebert]

Alarm clock. Use the thumbwheel switches to set the alarm time; 6 tubes gives hours/minutes/seconds.

Nice find!  Could you post a picture of the internals ? My guess is you would scrap all of the internal circuitry, except the transformer.

[Alex]

That will almost certainly take a quadrature input from a encoder and increment / decrement from that, so you could make a circuit to pulse it up and down to simulate time without modifying it at all. That would be a challenge at least. The Quadrature input will almost certainly give +5v and Ground out as well. Try connecting a rotary encoder to it and see what it counts in (step size). If you were really cunning you could very quickly count backwards / forwards at mid-day and mid-night such that you could use the + and - marker for AM and PM. It would mean you circuit would have to pulse leading or lagging B channel depending on wither it was counting up or down but its all just software in the end :-)

Nice find, I parted a dead mitutoyo DRO from that line, but about 20 years younger (non nixie), a while back.

- Alex

[Oscilloclock]

I really like minimal invasion when doing a conversion - although that might be tougher with nixies than with CRTs.

What if you actually kept this unit as a distance measuring device, and built a stepper-driven mechanical slide (like the head of a printer) that would be stepped to represent timely physical distance? The controller would step the head a tiny amount for each second, say 0.1mm, so 6mm for 1 minute, then step from 10mm to 16mm for minute 2, and so on. 09:13:25 would mean 9.1325m though, so perhaps using 3 stepped sliders and doing an analogue multiplier on the input would be more realistic. The result in that case would be really interesting to see, like the carriages on 3 old typewriters stepping along...

Of course this could be done with voltmeters or other readout units, too. Just a crazy idea.

Aaron

[Terry S]

Looks like it's from a CMM. Had a similar unit at last employer. Lost track of it 25 years ago when they upgraded to LED units.

[Andy Tefft]

I agree with the minimally invasive route. Is this a digital caliper of some sort? In which case there would have been a device plugged into that input with which to do the measuring. If you have that and it works then a physical representation of the time is a neat idea, if you can drive it with sufficient precision.

Otherwise perhaps you could just simulate whatever electrical signal it would generate and achieve the same effect. Again, the precision might be tough.

I started a counter-based clock on this principle - I just output pulses appropriately to increment the display as needed. The only modification I made to the counter was to give myself access to the reset signal so that I could reliably start counting at 0 when I needed to.  It was a neat project but didn't make it past breadboard stage.

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[Quixotic Nixotic]

Yes, it's another Firesign Theater quote. But I am trying to work out if this multiple Klein bottle could be filled with gas or not and if so, which parts would glow? Answers on the back of a banknote of your choice please.

I can't wait for Nick de Smith to make me one, now he has the skillset.

John S

[Tom Harris]

You can't fill a Klein bottle with anything as there is no inside to fill. Anymore than you can colour in a Moebius strip with two colours without them touching.

Tom Harris <celep...@gmail.com>

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[jb-electronics]

Topology at its finest -- I am going to show this to my maths professor :-)

Jens

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[Tom Harris]

You can own one of Clifford Stoll's remarkable creations from http://www.kleinbottle.com/

Quite inexpensive if you have ever tried scientific glassblowing.

Tom Harris <celep...@gmail.com>

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[Nick]

On Tuesday, 24 March 2015 21:36:21 UTC, Nixcited delighted wrote:

Yes, it's another Firesign Theater quote. But I am trying to work out if this multiple Klein bottle could be filled with gas or not and if so, which parts would glow? Answers on the back of a banknote of your choice please.

I can't wait for Nick de Smith to make me one, now he has the skillset

Yeah. Whatever!

Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I found it tough just to make the letters of the alphabet... (actually, letters are not easy)

Thanks for that John - is it real or a photoshop?

Nick

[Nick]

On Tuesday, 24 March 2015 23:05:15 UTC, celephicus wrote:

You can own one of Clifford Stoll's remarkable creations from http://www.kleinbottle.com/

Quite inexpensive if you have ever tried scientific glassblowing.

I've tried glassblowing. It's incredibly hard and those prices seem extremely reasonable to me!

I just love the "Klein Hat" - going to get one of those for my brother (an academic pure mathematician).

 Nick 

[Jeff Walton]

This is very cool!

 

Jeff W.

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[Cqr]

I have a Klein Stein from Clifford, even the invoice that came with it was a work of art :)

Cheers,

.      Robin.

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[Terry S]

While I generally agree with "minimally invasive", I don't on this piece of gear. This is an obscure display unit for a very obsolete piece of equipment. The odds of anyone ever needing it again to serve it's original purpose are extremely slim to none. Unlike a voltmeter or other piece of stand-alone gear, which could still serve a useful function for someone, this one never will.

 

If you want to make a clock out of it, I say hack it up and do so. It's a handsome cabinet.

 

Terry

 

On Monday, March 23, 2015 at 9:39:28 PM UTC-5, Kerry Borgne wrote:

[Quixotic Nixotic]

It is a real object. I did have a Klein bottle blown for me once years ago, but it developed a hairline crack and fractured, so I was rather hoping you'd oblige Nick...

I may try and do a computer Klein soon...

I did do a recent 3d computer glass exercise, to see how convincing I might be able to make it. Lighting is the key. I used no 'lights' in the scene at all, simply soft-edged intrinsically-glowing panels such as photographers use. Electroluminescent-style I suppose. 

I did a study against white:

…and one against black.

Modelled, lit, textured and raytraced in Strata Design 3D CX 7.

John S

[Alex]

Not too sure I agree with this, A digital read out is a very standard and common piece of kit - and probably more useful than an aging and out of cal voltmeter since its just a counter without an oscillator - nothing to calibrate. Any modern encoder with greycode / quadrature output will plug right onto this and give accurate distance readouts (it may need scaling / pulse per rev setting up but I bet there is some DIP switches inside for that). But anyway, just my 2 cents. I particularly like the idea mentioned earlier of having a mechanically advanced slide and to read off distance as time. Maybe a synchronous motor driving a ball screw with a linear encoder!

Nice case, either way.

[Kerry Borgne]

Someone asked if I could post some additional pictures of the insides of this unit. Not really much to be seen but here is what I could see.

[gregebert]

Thanks for posting the pics. It's amazing how much manual work was involved in building older equipment, such as this unit. Even the PCBs have additional manual wiring.

I was curious about the innards, particularly about what would be salvageable if you decide to make a clock out of it.

As much as I hate to destroy another person's work, it's usually easier to do a new design than it is to reverse-engineer an existing one, especially if you dont have a full set of schematics and datasheets for obsolete parts.

Another option might be making your own plug-in cards, but that would depend upon how the existing chassis is wired and the condition of the wires themselves. Some insulation materials become very brittle over time (either because of heat-exposure, or because the chemical composition is inferior), and you have to replace the wire. I've even seen hard-plastic items like edge-card connectors get brittle over time and break when the card is removed and re-inserted.