I get your point, Greg, and I've designed and built several clocks, I know exactly how rewarding it is. I've been a PCB designer for over 20 years, so my point is, and it's not obvious I guess..... that the PCB design is not the challenge. I've got more PCB designs under my belt than most designers will ever tackle, including a couple of my own one-off nixie clocks. This time I want to buy a board, or a kit, and design a case around it. Yet I am fussy about the clock function, hence my list of requirements earlier. A few recent experiments into wood and metal working has me wanting to stretch my skills in that dimension. I see some IN-18 kits starting around $100 out there, so there is a certain logic in buying another's proven design. NIH (not invented here) is not an issue with me, my ego won't be bruised if I buy this time, rather than design.
On Wednesday, January 21, 2015 at 1:17:01 PM UTC-6, gregebert wrote: > I recommend building from scratch if you want to design your own case. > That way you can showcase the tubes however you wish; with a kit you're > pretty much limited by the board layout regarding where the tubes will be. > If you want something that will look *really* nice (why not, IN-18's are > nice tubes...) then it wont be low cost. I probably spent close to 1000 USD > ($300 for 5 PCB sets, $300 for tubes, about $300 on remaining parts, $100 > for the case) on my big clock, but it turned out so much better than I > expected that my wife basically insisted I put it in the most prominent > location in the house (above the fireplace). > > I'm almost done my third built-from-scratch nixie project in 4 years and > wouldn't do it any other way. There's lots of free high-quality design > software for PCB layout, schematic capture, FPGA development, Verilog > simulation, SPICE simulation that I have used. None of my boards have blue > wires: 6 of 7 worked the first time (7th board is still in bringup, no blue > wires yet). > > After doing PC boards, I will never go back to doing circuits on a > perfboard again. The amount of effort to do a PCB design is about the same > as 1 breadboard, and from then-on you are ahead of the game for additional > builds when using a PCB. Then there's the whole quality & neatness > advantage of PCBs. > > Likewise, I probably wont buy any PCB kits, either. Years ago I built > several Heathkits, and they were a great learning tool. But they are gone, > and with the free PCB tools and plenty of inexpensive manufacturers, I've > moved on. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/85ec24c9-52b3-4b24-82b6-0b4e31bd04a9%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
