Buying Nixies from outside the UK

[electrofish]

Hello
as a relatively new starter with nixie etc I want to buy some IN14s and dekatrons.
I am based in the UK and have been looking at UK suppliers with only two that I can find.
One is out of stock.
I have found some abroad in another EU country, which are much cheaper, but I'm not sure on two things.
1.  Do they survive well travelling in the mail?
2.  Are there any import restrictions to the UK due to the content ie neon etc?

Sorry if they seem stupid questions.
Regards
John

[Quixotic Nixotic]

Liquid flux seems expensive to buy and it comes in tiddly bottles.

I bought a solid tin of colophony, eg ebay item 121041198430, dissolved it in Isopropyl alcohol and it seems to make an excellent flux. Lots and lots of it can be made very cheaply.

Can the experts tell me if this is a really bad idea or not? I do wash the board off afterwards, but with SMT chips I suppose it might leave some kind of residue under the IC.

John S

[Jon]

Hi John,

 

As long as the sender packs them adequately to prevent the glass envelopes breaking, you shouldn't have any problems getting them shipped into the UK. Take a look on eBay to check the prices that you're being quoted are reasonable. There are no import restrictions to the UK which have ever affected me. However, if the package is given a customs value in excess of £18 there's a chance Royal Mail will spot it and charge you 20% VAT + their iniquitous £8 handling fee.

 

Nothing to do with shipping, but as a general principle with dekatrons do be aware that the exotic high speed ones have a significant dud rate due to loss of their magic fill gases in storage. Stick to nice slow speed neon ones and you should be fine.

 

Jon.

[Terry Kennedy]

On Feb 26, 2:36 pm, Jon <dekat...@nomotron.com> wrote:
> As long as the sender packs them adequately to prevent the glass envelopes
> breaking, you shouldn't have any problems getting them shipped into the UK.

Not in the UK, but I've been ordering stuff from former Soviet bloc
countries for delivery in the US and only had one problem:
http://www.tmk.com/blog/6F5S8816-s.jpg

And that one was due to poor packaging, and the seller and I reached a
mutually satisfactory settlement. I must have at least 5000 assorted
displays here (Nixie, VFD, esoterica) and never had one damaged in
shipment, other than the clock shown above. The sellers seem to do a
good job of packing the tubes for shipment, using a variety of methods
(anything from bubble wrap to decades-old newspapers / cardboard.
There are some scammers out there, though - look to see how long the
seller has been on eBay and how much feedback (as a seller) they have.

It's a good idea to confirm that the quoted shipping cost is at least
somewhat related to the actual post cost. Most countries have English-
language versions of their web sites where you can calculate postage.
The only one that I know of that's way off is Moldova - their English
site quotes a much lower rate than the native-language version for
some reason.

[Alex]

I have bought thousands of £ worth of tubes from Ukraine, Moldova and Romania and with the exception of a few smashed IN-9 tubes that I received reimbursement for I have never had any issues or shipping / customs problems.

Terry, shame about that IV-26 clock - that's the big version too! I bought a load of IV-26 tubes a while ago before realising there are 3 types (watch out for that sort of thing with the Russian tubes, John!) 

- Alex

[Smiffy]

I had been half hoping to see some clarification to this point of John's original question, because there are certainly EU regulations concerning hazardous substances (Ne may be inert, but you can find Hg, Be, other nasties.)

On Tuesday, February 26, 2013 10:29:27 PM UTC+10:30, electrofish wrote:

...

2.  Are there any import restrictions to the UK due to the content ie neon etc?

I had wondered whether this affected non-commercial quantities of products, thinking as to whether I could assemble PCBs with proper, er, lead-based, solder and then send them to the UK. A compliance expert at Element14 (Farnell/Newark) gave me a very guarded answer of yes - but not sure if he was uncertain and assuming the worst. Even if this were the case for NEW stuff, there remains the question if this would also apply to equipment containing 'heritage' parts - and those parts themselves. 

The three four-letter acronyms that I believe may be of concern are REACH[1], RoHS[2], and WEEE[3].

Cheers

M

1 - http://echa.europa.eu/web/guest/regulations/reach

2 - http://www.bis.gov.uk/nmo/enforcement/rohs-home

3 - http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/business/topics/waste/139283.aspx

[Terry Kennedy]

On Feb 27, 2:57 pm, Alex <ajlgr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Terry, shame about that IV-26 clock - that's the big version too! I bought
> a load of IV-26 tubes a while ago before realising there are 3 types (watch
> out for that sort of thing with the Russian tubes, John!)

The clock is happy now, and I even wrote up an article on making
replacement faceplates:
http://www.tmk.com/blog/?p=525

That particular clock is the "cost-reduced" 11-tube version which uses
the unobtainable Type II tubes. There's also the 12-tube version - all
of those that I've seen actually have all the solder pads for Type I
tubes, regardless of whether they were built with Type I or Type II
tubes. The "baby" Elektronika 7 clocks use 4 Type III tubes per digit.
Those tubes are still readily available (as are the Type I), but
they're really only good for that particular clock as the dots aren't
controllable individually. The Type I is the version of the IV-26
where each dot is individually controlled.

More Elektronika articles from me:
http://www.tmk.com/blog/?p=310
http://www.tmk.com/blog/?p=419