Here's an even more exciting way of (sometimes!) reinvigorating a shorted tube. Chances are that a piece of debris or bent/moved wire has bridged two of the Cathodes. You should be able to find which two, by going around the base of the nixie tube, testing for any continuity (may be a short, or a few ohms) between each pair of wires - not just adjacent ones. This is best done with the device out of circuit if possible, or if in circuit with any ICs removed (you DID socket your ICs, didn't you? Of course you did...).
DOUBLE CHECK that any continuity that you find is between cathodes and not a heater/getter or two common anode wires. Do this by comparing any shorts you find against the same wires of a good tube. Now get a power supply capable of delivering more than 24V at a couple of amps. Apply this briefly across the two shorted pins. With luck, this will "blow" the short circuit away, like a fuse going (you may even see a small flash). I have used this to good effect on a mix of nixie tubes (including IN18 and IN8's). LET ME REPEAT That this won't fix every case, and MAY make matters worse (blowing a cathode open circuit, if you are unlucky). But if the nixie tube is already otherwise unusable, what have you got to lose? Laurence WWW.MrNixie.com On Dec 18, 11:04 am, jb-electronics <webmas...@jb-electronics.de> wrote: > >> Any idea how to fix this? > > Buy a few more tubes and replace the defective ones. > > Sometimes it helps to gently shake the tube. In some cases (not in > yours, though) you could use the defective tube on a place in your > application where it only needs to display the functioning digits. So > say digits 5 and 7 are connected, but you only need digits 0,1,2 (i.e. > the tens of hours in a clock). > > Jens -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/neonixie-l?hl=en-GB.
