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Morgan Gangwere
On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 2:09 PM, A.J. <[email protected]> wrote:
8<----Snip--->8 The 85Kr is present in a few nixie types to reduce what is known as the "dark effect". Several factors affect the time it takes a nixie to ionize and light up from cold, one of the more significant of which is the amount of ambient radiation (usually light). Manufacturers added a small amount of mildly radioactive Krypton gas as a source of ions to a few types, for use in situations where they might be required to light up immediately in dark locations. Most of the radiation produced by 85Kr is low-energy Beta, which can not penetrate glass.This is what I gathered from the various websites i've found with them. I'm surprised dieter doesn't have pictures of them, given the apparent commonality of these guys :) Also, the amount present is so low that you'd literally have to smash and inhale from thousands (perhaps millions?) of new tubes at once to have any significant increased risk of harm above that from everyday background radiation. Finally, the half-life of 85Kr is less than a decade, so those tubes now have less than a tenth the radioactivity that they did when they were made. So, nothing to worry about at all, really. The radioactivity labeling is only there because the U.S. government required it.Yeah I noticed that (Of course they could care less now at those low values). I have a friend who has an oooold smoke detector that uses Polonium or some such for co2 detection. [snip] Firstly, nixies with rigid pins should not be soldered, and you'd probably have a difficult time of it if you tried. Second, and most importantly, type B-5092-A uses one of the most common types of nixie sockets (13-pin round), which are fairly readily available from several sources usually including Jan Wuesten, Sphere Research, and Ebay. Properly driven nixie tubes (except the earliest types) can last for decades of continuous use, so you probably won't be doing much replacing anyway.I searched and my thing is I dont want to have to order anything I cant get at say my local Surplus outlet. I *have* socket headers I can solder onto a board and I wrote me a script that generates the locations of all the pins (given # pins including keys && size in mils of the diameter of original socket). I'll go divulge myself of another few surplus places to see but its looking grim. I mean my last-ditch effort is I suck the socket leads out of a few connectors I have laying around. Also, for anyone curious I took some pictures of my found Nixies: -- Morgan gangwere ¡°The future¡¯s already arrived. It¡¯s just not evenly distributed yet.¡± William Gibson |
