The well-known Penning mixture is 0.5 to 2.0% Argon, and that seems to fit with your graphs. Mixing this on your own into the tube itself could be challenging due to the small fraction of Ar; You might be able to find it pre-mixed, or otherwise try to mix K4 with neon on your own in a separate gas cylinder. I dont know how you would measure the gas concentration after mixing. Maybe spectral analysis after-the-fact ?
I wanted to do my own neon art years ago, but was put-off by the dangers of bombarding and the cost of the vacuum equipment. From what I've read, you need a diffusion pump to get down to a few microns if you want good quality tubes. An alternative to the high vacuum might be to pump-down as far as your vane pump will go, then "flush" the impurities with neon and re-evacuate. I'd really like to know what you had to go thru to get your first glowing tube, so please keep us updated. On Tuesday, June 15, 2021 at 2:23:17 AM UTC-7 ErikPaul wrote: > So I've been working on making my own nixies, main dream is to produce a > tube using uranium glass tubing in place of your regular boro or soda lime > glass. In sourcing fill gases(not a huge quantity of suppliers who sell in > small quantities to non-commercial) i keep coming across a mix called "K4" > which is 75% neon 25% argon. My question is would the much higher > percentage of argon make the breakdown voltage too high? I found a couple > of Ne-Ar voltage to concentration graphs but the highest Ar % that they > show is 5%, but it looks as though the curve trends upwards with higher %. > My main draw to the K4 is it would remove the need for separate Ne and Ar > valves and inlets. My gut tells me that it won't work well but I figured > I'd chuck the question to the experts(you guys). > > Erik > Here is a link to the graph I mentioned > http://www.lamptech.co.uk/Documents/SO%20Gas.htm > -- 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 view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/3e137b19-1f3d-4b8d-b048-9f9236d6d5a3n%40googlegroups.com.
