It will depend on who you ask, so be prepared for opinions and reasons. We all value the tubes highly and try to do whatever we think will prolong and extend their lives. Keep some spares for a rainy day…
I would have no problem moving them around (that’s my comfort level) but the cathode poisoning prevention routines are supposed to help prolong the usable life of the tubes. Even within a single tube, you might normally observe small variations. You only run the risk of damaging the pin seals to the tubes by physically moving them around. Careful handling and straight pins will reduce the risk. One widely used practice for tubes that are used, is to place any tubes that have weak digits (other than 1 and 0) in the tens of hours position because that position uses the least of the digits on a regular basis. The tens of minutes and the tens of seconds are the next “hiding place” for tubes that have weak upper digits. Only the seconds and minutes positions are evenly used in the conventional six digit clock. I have one nixie clock that ran for over 35 years without a tube failure (CK8754 tubes). I think that the overall brightness was slightly lower after all of those years but they faded together. The tubes were never rotated and in fact, the pins were soldered to wires in the perf board with point-to-point wiring. They were direct drive at rated current. While these tubes were not IN-18, I think that nixies, if driven within spec using modern designs and cathode poisoning prevention, can expect a decent life. The Spectrum clocks have cathode poisoning prevention and currently feature a PIR motion sensor that will extend the life of the tubes when no one is around. I think that using the PIR feature will have more of an overall life extending effect than moving the tubes around. Jeff From: neonixie-l@googlegroups.com [mailto:neonixie-l@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Forfanatic Tsai Sent: Friday, June 03, 2016 1:08 AM To: neonixie-l Subject: [neonixie-l] Relocate tubes on single clock Hi, sorry this might sound like a noob question..... Will you relocate tubes on a clock? like switch second tubes with hour tubes for balancing life time. Or just left them there until they fails? I own one Spectrum 18 from PV electronics now and IN-18 price is flying high now :( (sure I won't care this if it's a set of cheap IN-12s lol) -- 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 email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/abafe9be-6d73-46c8-87c3-6837eed9be92%40googlegroups.com <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/abafe9be-6d73-46c8-87c3-6837eed9be92%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- 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/5751270c.81266b0a.fd2de.7031%40mx.google.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
