Homemade Nixie Tube

Initial Functional Nixie (Not Really Technically a Nixie)

The initial foray I’ve started with plasma, this device uses a vacuum sealed jar with a tungsten wire shaped into a number. This was mostly to validate my setup and understanding of operations. Using a cheap vacuum pump, mason jars, chicken wire, jb-weld original (lowest offgassing and widely available), tungsten wire, and a 20kV plasma power supply built via a rectified neon sign transformer cobbled together from it and some hv diodes, I assembled and tested a rudimentary high voltage nixie. Assembly is easy but the choice of jar made it rather annoying to see. That and tungsten wire costs meant that I had ordered a much smaller amount than anticipated, so my numbers also are small. Initial designs used this radiative element design. Eventually switched to being contained with a grid instead to balance the dispersive-ness of the glow.

Future testing is to get it working at a low voltage via helium or other noble gas infilling. But so far I have only fabricated a resealable and reusable jar and power supply systems. Mostly due to helium cost and the difficulty of purity as a cheap consumer (balloon store helium is pretty messy).