On Thu, Mar 23, 2006 at 12:14:52AM +0200, Peter wrote:
> > I haven't played with Nixie tubes for a long time - just wondered
> > about the heat generated by the filaments (Mike Harrison would
> > know - he's got a Nixie tube page)
> 
> There are no filaments in a Nixie ? I think that you mean VFD. VFD is 
> much harder than Nixie, it requires 'electronic' vacuum. The Nixies use 
> something between 1 and 10 Torr. You can make Nixie-alikes with air or 
> welding gas (= blue-white discharge).

Welding gas? Like argon? I hope you don't mean acetylene...

One of my teachers, who I've found out spent all of last year on a
sabatical studying tubes, said that aparently some types of vacuum
diodes can be made to have a blue-white discharge if driven correctly,
he said it's due to the trace gasses added to them, so I think what you
describe may be the same mechanism.


The same teacher was also very impressed when I rigged up two tube
diodes to rectify AC and power... a pic chip. Next on my list is a
switching power supply, with a tube as the switching element.

-- 
pete@petertodd.ca http://www.petertodd.ca
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