As the title says.

I am constructing this little spinner circuit, and wondered if I could use a OA3/OD3 in place of an NE2 in the relaxation oscillator circuit? I have a bunch of the voltage regulators, and as amp builders know they are pretty when glowing. So for no other reason that aesthetics and show, I wanted to use one in this little project.

I doubt there's enough current available, but you can always try it and see.

What goober drew up that excuse of a circuit ! ... um ... oh ... that's mine ... oops.

Don't know if a regulator tube will work. If it does, the brightness of the flash, might disappoint you.

I've made relax oscillators with 0Y4 rectifiers. 0Y4s aren't too exciting, on account of the metal shell blocking any glowing goodness from being seen.

Only way to really find out, is to lash up a simple relax osc, just by it self. You may find that R14 may need to be greatly reduced to prevent it from stalling. Also the values of R13 and C5 may have to be tinkered with. Get yourself a handful of trial parts. R14 from 470 ohm up to 10K, R13 from 47K up to 2.2M, and C5 from 0.1 to 4.7uf. In the end though, the results may be less than thrilling.

Hello Mr Goober

Well it just so happens you received some money from me these last few days for one of your kits I just can't help tinkering!

I've had the OA3s running nicely with a 470k resistor and a 2uf cap (if memory serves) and it flashes away nice and bright. I was just wanting to add an extra dimension to you kit, as a flashing tube loses its interest quite rapidly

I guess I could always modify the cathode circuits to drive one of the OA3s alongside the Dekatron...

Looking forward to when you have the PCBs for the DoHickie again!

N

That's good to hear. I have a few regulator tubes. 0A3, 0B3, 0C3, & 0D3. I'll lite some up and see how they pulse.

I also have a couple 0A5 triggers. They flash very bright. Almost strobe light bright. I've made a spinner using those, and you don't need the MPSA42 amp stage. The 0A5 pulses the dekatron directly. In fact, the signal is too big, and the signal needs attenuation, to properly work:

http://threeneurons.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/0a5_spnr.gif
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xmzo1p_0a5-relax-osc-dekatron-spinner_tech

As far as the do-hickie goes, I'll have to re-lay out the board for "thru-hole" components. The current artwork is a mix of surface mount and thru-hole. To get more traction as a kit, thru-hole gives you a wider market.

I recently re-ordered a new batch of spinner kit boards. I just sold my last one. The new batch should come in in about a couple of weeks. Don't worry about yours. I only sell what I have in immediate stock. So, if you haven't received it yet, its still in the mail. The popularity of this spinner kit surprised me.

Now that's a simple circuit I can have a play with on my new prototype board, inspired by another post on another forum. If you come up with another circuit using any of the other tubes I'll play with that too.





I agree on the SMC boards. I recently built a kit supplied by a German guy I know to run Magic eyes as a sound to light show, and it was 85% SMC, and trouble shooting was a nightmare, so much so that he swapped out the board (which worked first time after assembly). I just think for the home hobbyist SMC is just too much hassle. I'm sure there are some of us out there who can use a hot air gun like a surgeon, but I'm much happier with something I can actually hold while I solder

SMT, like many things, is a matter of practice. Good eyes and good tools help an awful lot too.

You see there goes my Britishness... I always called them SMComponents, and not SMTechnology

I have soldered SMC/T, but it's a right royal pain in the derriere, but as you say tools and eyesight, and for me a great big loupe!

All this surface mount talk is probably giving the old guys fits !

Their limit of small probably stops at an acorn tube:

Oh, I changed some parts on surface-mount boards at work last week. But even simple parts like surface-mount resistors are getting smaller.

Oh, get off! Some of us got as far as Nuvistors....

On the other hand, it's true that I don't care for SMUT.

Larry

I often design with 0201 passives. I use a microscope and just the right amount of coffee.

I've never (yet) used 01005s but I have put 128 0.25mm x 0.25mm bare photodiode dice and their related 128 channels of 4 MHz BW, 230 K Ohm (gain) transimpedance amps on a board that is literally the size of a credit card. Actually, it is two distinct 64-channel (replete with unique power/ground) circuits separated by an electrically-isolated 0.010" copper center plane that solely acted as a thermal transfer to a heat sink. This was used in a (very) custom high-speed multispectral line-scan absorbance photometer. Say that ten times fast.

I like to design with tubes. The scale is quite refreshing.

Your skills are admirable, and I can see the benefit of miniaturization, and when I was a kid learning to how to do stuff, I thought tubes (valves as I called them growing up in the UK) were a waste of time, and many hit the wall at high speed for fun! What have I done

In recent times I've found a lot of fun building and messing about with tubes, and their beauty, and of course superior audio.

My favorite project to date is this.





Just so much more fun to look at than SMCs

The casing took longer to make than the circuit...and that's 1/4" plate glass in front of the B+ of 2400 VDC

Nice scope clock !

Did you get it here ?

http://www.die-wuestens.de/dindex.htm?/r5.htm

Now you got me wondering. Did you venture here from an alternate universe, say:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/neonixie-l

They got me to rediscover tubes.

Yeah, they were probably 0201s that one of the engineers asked me if I could change from 1 meg to 2. Taller parts all around,
so I couldn't get in with the hot tweezers, had to use my regular bench iron. 1206s were much friendlier.

I agree, nice scope clock. What's the CRT?

Awesome clock, Nodric! I have an old RCA WO-57A oscilloscope that looks like it's been hacked up a bit inside. Might be a good candidate for something like this since it would be a fair amount of work to restore to original.

Scott Todd

Yes I did get the kit and tube from Jan. He's a very nice guy! I acquired all the parts before I left Europe for the States. I married a Citizen

The scope clock PCB and components comes from Bernhard Thiem http://www.thiem-work.de/ as he was the designer. Jan supplies the kit, but most importantly he supplies the CRT, and he also does the bespoke toroidal. The rest is over to you. I made the case, the brass control panel where I remote mounted the focus, stigmatism, and brightness, as well as other parts to connect power and set the time etc. I also fused each of the three secondaries on the tranny, as well as the primary (in the power lead socket). I added a big red illuminated switch just because I wanted one

The time syncs to the mains 60hz, and will also work on 220 50hz. In Europe you can add a time signal board, but this is useless on the east coast as the time signal is in Colorado, and the clock can only work with a 1hr offset.



I also built a NIXIE clock I did come from another universe, but not the forum, just the UK

I personally like the less-than-subtle royal blue underglow. Nice.

Just put a 0A3 and a 0C3 in relax osc ckt. The 0A3 actually has a nice flash. The 0C3 not so much, probably due to it flashing a much duller purple, than the 0A3 neon orange. If you reference the circuit in the OP, R13=470K, C5=3.3uf, & R14=330 ohm. Scoping the voltage across R14, shows a 10V pk pulse, of ~4mS in width. The circuit stalls if R14 is made to much greater than ~1.5K. In short it works. Works fine with a cap all the way down to 0.47uf. Will probably work even smaller, but the brightness is very dependent on the cap value. Higher equals brighter.

Well here's my little box for checking tube circuits:



Actually, it was made to check that the tubes are functional. Tube checker, more than tube tester, since it doesn't yield parameter data. Instead of screw in terminal blocks, I use upturned IDC connectors. You just plug in solid #22 wire the same way as with "solderless protoboards". All tube sockets are tied in parallel, so its original intent was just one tube at a time. The eye-tube is a common 6AF6, with the filament always on, and the target, cathode, and two shadow controls, brought out to the upper IDC connector (aka ribbon cable connector, 2-row, 0.100" centers).

It's an AEG DN 10-14 CRT (super bright and about $100 NOS).

It needs post acceleration, with an anode voltage of +1500v and a cathode of -900v. The small extra PCB with the black caps on is the post acceleration that derives the extra oomph, and the rest of the tube feeds are fed off the main board. The deflection circuits are all on the board on trimmers. I was going to remote mount them as well, but it was proving hard to find multi turn trimmers that would mount on the rear.

The tube is not shielded (you wouldn't be able to see it otherwise so it is sensitive to big chunks of metal and other sources of magnetism, so you have to locate it away from such things, and adjust defection in situ to get the optimal display.