Greg – my 1971 clock with Burroughs CK8754 nixie tubes ran 27/7/365 for over 35 years with no tube or digit failures. It used 74141 drivers driven at ~170 volts by a rectified line voltage doubler circuit using recommended anode resistors from the example circuits out of the Texas Instruments data book. During the life of the clock, there were a couple failures of the caps in the voltage doubler but no failures in the tubes or chips. The clock was basic with no steps to prevent cathode poisoning and the tubes were actually soldered with wrapped wire around the pins. The entire clock was point to point wiring.
While I can’t attest that the brightness was the same as in the beginning, the display tubes were still perfectly viewable with full digit coverage and easily visible in a room with windows. In the early life of the tubes, I did note that there were occasional blue arcs that occurred with reducing frequency as the tubes “broke in”. I think the arcing stopped sometime within the first year. I came to the conclusion that a well designed nixie, which had good seal integrity, the right gases/doping and was operated within the specs could last a good long time. From: neonixie-l@googlegroups.com [mailto:neonixie-l@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of gregebert Sent: Wednesday, August 24, 2016 12:25 AM To: neonixie-l Subject: [neonixie-l] Re: b7971 segment current > I built three clocks with a total of 18 tubes. So far, after 40+ years, > there have been zero tube failures. 40 years ? How many hours per day are you running your tubes ? -- 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/265d4eac-fec6-491b-90a2-818055107d7f%40googlegroups.com <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/265d4eac-fec6-491b-90a2-818055107d7f%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/57bd4b12.469b6b0a.d9d0e.abd6%40mx.google.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
