I stopped using sockets because I was worried about the extreme insertion and extraction force. Ceramic sockets that I have seem to be very tight. Nixies are basically irreplaceable, so anything that is a risk to the tube is booted from my design, regardless of cost. I've been happy with PCB-mounted socket pins because they have very low insertion force, and make good-enough electrical contact.
Funny you mention this; I recently swapped-out eight B7971 tubes (socket pins only, NO sockets on these rare uglies*) from my clock, to test a set of boards for a fellow neonixie member. When I put the tubes back into my clock, 2 tubes had a dead segment because I didn't reseat the tubes properly. Of course I buttoned-up the case before fully testing every segment, and it was still very readable with 2 segments down, and I figured more might fail if I waited long enough though none ever did. Just fixed that yesterday by wiggling them a bit. Once tubes are seated-in, they seem to have perfect connectivity with socket pins *until* you remove them. Wiggling doesn't seem to cause problems, just removal. --------------------------------------------- * OK, so why do I refer to 7971's as "uglies" ? To be honest, they are pretty ugly because they lack the sculpted look of a real 10-numeral nixie tube. But they are gigantic, and can display alphanumerics very well so I overlook their crass appearance. On Monday, August 29, 2022 at 2:45:54 PM UTC-7 tntm...@gmail.com wrote: > Some people say ceramic sockets crack tubes at the pin and cause them to > go to air and that you should use bakelite sockets > > Some of my friends say they've lost tubes to it, some of them say they've > socketed countless tubes without issue. > > Ive got some ceramic sockets and some 9-pin digivacs and biquinary nixies > I'd rather not kill. So what's the deal? > -- 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/d83e2e41-ef85-4cdd-baa4-e5f6bec7222fn%40googlegroups.com.
