On Tuesday, 26 June 2012 14:15:00 UTC+1, glasslinger wrote: > > Good reason for not using mercury in your tubes! Pick a low sputter > cathode metal so it isn't necessary. Also, getters are not really necessary > in tubes operating at nixie tube pressures. Just do a good bakeout and you > will be fine. > >> >> This is interesting - early nixies had a life (whatever that may mean) of only a low number of 1000s of hours - later tubes with Hg went up to 200,000 hours.
If you want long-life, anti-sputtering seems essential - special non-Hg tubes were made for aircraft and subs etc. (where Hg is absolutely not allowed), but otherwise pretty much every later tube has it. The cathode technology was very well understood by then - why use any Hg if it wasn't necessary? Nick -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/neonixie-l/-/kRlRobOrJQ8J. 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.
