Electronics > Beginners
My 1st shot at Nixie and VFD tubes!
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Terry01:
I've taken the leap into Nixie and VFD tubes! I've ordered a couple of clock kits from Ukraine hoping that building them up will give me somewhere to start as I find them fascinating!
Are there any heads up on any certain parts of building them the more experienced members can give me?

PS. I know "try to not to get electrocuted" or "stick my tongue in the socket" and things like that before anyone states the obvious... ha ha!
This will be the first time I've played with anything high voltage.  >:D
Ian.M:
If you haven't worked with tubes before, remember glass is fragile.  If your tubes have rigid pins, then the socket contacts *must* have room to 'float' in their shell, otherwise you risk cracking the tube envelope, and even a micro-crack will let air in and ruin the tube if it goes right through the seal.   Also cracks tend to grow  with thermal cycling so don't start one in the first place.   Wire ended tubes tend to have leadout wires that fatigue easily due to the alloys* they are made of, so in addition to risking cracking the glass if you don't support the wire between where you are bending it and where it enters the glass, if you bend it repeatedly at or near the  same spot, it *will* break.   Also, its possible that the wire near the seal isn't plated or otherwise treated to make it readily solderable so even if you have a stub of wire remaining, getting a reliable connection to it may be difficult.  The usual problem is that repeated handling + use in a couple of projects has fatigued the  wire right where it enters the seal, then one of the  wires just drops right off with the end flush with the glass seal.

Planar VFDs also don't like having their leadout legs bent close to the seal.   If you need to form the legs, support them next to the seal and take extreme care if you need to bend them sideways.  Breadboarding with them is possible, but if one leg 'sticks' on insertion or removal, you risk an uncontrolled bend and possible cracked seal or broken leg.

* As copper's coefficient of thermal expansion is too far from that of most glasses, its very difficult to get a reliable copper to glass seal so they can't simply use copper wires.
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