Hi! Thank you sooo much for the positivity and constructive attitude - not only it helps me to get closer to the working H tube, but it is also incredibly motivating. In these gloomy autumn days, it is especially important ;-) We got much good advice here in the comments, I want to underline some: It was suggested that the insulating layer of the ceramics of the Ceramawire is not thick enough to bring the potential below striking (or better maintaining) voltage level. So, the potential at the surface of the wire is still enough to strike and/or keep the glow running. That was expected, what is a real issue is that the ceramic coating is porous, allowing the electrons to escape from the underlying wire despite the dielectric strength of the insulation layer was not exceeded. Just a small quantity of free electrons is enough to keep the glow running as they produce new free electrons from the gas molecules itself. The idea is to study these processes more in-depth and make another video about it soon. Thank you for your support!

@RayRayGaming-xb3pz

3 жыл бұрын

Do you plan on making more of these? I may be willing to buy some

@lexaa8296

3 жыл бұрын

You are a very motivated person and a talented engineer. A professional in his field. You will succeed)

@unmountablebootvolume

3 жыл бұрын

I have a question about the gas, that you fill your tubes with: Do you a radioactive starting aid like kr-85, or do these tubes purely rely on the high voltage for ionisation? I know a lot of smaller neon lamps (often used in switches) do use radioactive substances to help them start at voltages of

@daliborfarny

3 жыл бұрын

@@RayRayGaming-xb3pz Yes, the H tube will become our product one day, once all the issues are solved!

@daliborfarny

3 жыл бұрын

@@unmountablebootvolume We dont use anything radioactive, it is not necessary - the tubes strike reliably.

What a dramatic movie. It really hurt physically when you broke the glass pipe, and it was a big relief and joy at the First Light. What a fascinating hand craft process, so many different steps. Thank you for sharing this whole drama, your ups and downs. You will for sure be successful, I'll keep my fingers crossed. How beautiful this tube looks, anyhow! Best part is your wrap-up in the dark.

Nixie tubes have a beauty and aura that is unmatched by anything else. Something about them is just mesmerizing.

You sir are an artisan.

@aidenwhitlock5017

3 жыл бұрын

Well, literally in a sense, yes!

@annonymous3871

3 жыл бұрын

Nice compliment!

Few have the tooling and equipment to take on such a challenge. Even fewer have the necessary skills and knowledge to make these tubes. Excellent work sir.

Regarding the glow of the ceramawire: A common way to test insulated wires is to place them in water (with some salt) while having the wire ends above water. Then measure the insulation resistance from the conductor to the water. If there are any cracks or holes in the insulation you get a short to the water. If the ceramawire fail this test it proves the insulation is cracked or faulty.

@AppliedScience

3 жыл бұрын

That's a great suggestion, Richard! I'm sorry the ceramawire didn't prevent a plasma from forming. Perhaps it's caused by tiny cracks that are not a problem when using the ceramic insulation to prevent physical contact between the wire and nearby conductors. But in a conductive plasma... It's another story. Thanks so much, Dalibor, for documenting your work! It's really fascinating to watch, and we are all so happy to see first light from the tube!

@yoppindia

3 жыл бұрын

dipping it in mercury would be better test of insulation, but little bit more hazardous

3 жыл бұрын

@@yoppindia I am almost sure mercury will not help. It has extremely high surface tension in contact with air. It is highly probable that the surface tension with ceramics is also very high. Mercury would not wet it and would not get into the small cracks.

@yoppindia

3 жыл бұрын

@ I had read a book about transformer in which they showed a way to test enamelled copper wire for cracks. All it need is to touch the wire with mercury and you will get open cracked enamel by passing a current through copper wire and mercury. Infact there are switches which are used to detect position using mercury. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_switch

@daliborfarny

3 жыл бұрын

Nice test, didnt think about it - will do for sure, thank you!

"Why are these things so expensive?!" - Watches video - "ohhhhh" 😁

Hi! Great to see that big thing glowing! My heart jumped about as much as yours when you knocked that stem off! I've done the same thing! Now, on the glowing connecting wires. You already know the painting the ceramic glue on the wire. Too tedious for production of course. What I have tried is stretching some tubing to make a very thin fine capillary that the wire barely fits through. This can be easily bent to shape while assembling the tube using a very small tip torch. The glue can be used to fix any small spots. I worry about residual stress in the front window that might not crack the glass until winter. I just finished a CRT with a 3 inch window. It sealed perfectly but several days later it had cracked.

I've been watching for a couple of years at your work, but now you really took my breath away. Good luck and best regards from Belarus!

This video was amazing! Riveting from start to finish! Thank you for sharing your challenges and progress with us. Ever since I found your business a few years ago, I was worried it would disappear, and the art would be lost again. But watching this, I know that the artisan spirit is not dead. Thank you.

Thank you, Dalibor! This was awesome to watch. Break the Problem!

@PixelatedPuzzlements

3 жыл бұрын

jackson

I really appreciate you sharing your learning and methods with us. The fact that you have to create so much of the tooling for what you do is impressive. It can be very inspirational too, considering how much 3d printing and CAD work your doing these days. Which has become so accessible to the everyday public.

Terrific effort! The numbers are so incredibly elegant! Stunning!

@BTGDelta

3 жыл бұрын

It's nice to run into a random comment from a person you really love watching. Never thought it would occur on a pretty obscure nixie tube channel :)

@CuriousMarc

3 жыл бұрын

@@BTGDelta Thanks! What Dalibor is doing is so amazing and it is so uplifting to watch him practice his art. And his channel is not obscure, it’s glowing bright orange ;-) !

what I find refreshing, is that you are showing the not desirable outcomes and its all about learning and making a better product, keep up the good work and believe in the fantastic work you are doing. you are creating ‘art’

I was literally smiling when I saw it light up. Great stuff Dalibor, this project has been super exciting to watch.

I can’t wait to see all the digits glowing. So cool. The final H tube is going to be amazing!

Nixie Tubes might be the most satisfying display ever. That sweet redish orange high voltage glow is just so inviting. It flows.

Tie oblúky pri skratovaných katódach sú celkom zaujímavé,gratulujem k prvému svitu!

I've been watching your work for a few years now, and it's always very intriguing and inspiring to see what you are creating. Thank your for sharing :) I hope you have success with your projects and your team.

That much labour, trial and error, dedication, craftsmanship, knowledge and all that for a single tube. (This tube should be so proud!!!!!) I really liked your first video, and ofcourse this video, I hope I can find your tubes in the future.... It is awesome what you do here, really! Thanks for your beautiful work!

Don't be afraid to use more structural bends in your plates. If you need a torus, use the structural ridges to give it the strength it needs to maintain shape. This will also help when it heats up later.

I as everyone else am a very big fan of your craftsmanship, I'm using your tubes in a unit I built & can't wait for these H-Tubes be available for purchase. Thank you so very much !

Pretty neat watching you experiment trying to develop processes that solve issues with your build. The shop I work as we don't have the breadth of equipment you do but I will still on occasion have to create jigs, fixtures and methods for making stuff for our customers. We work with simple common plastics such as acrylic, polycarbonate, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, polyvinyl cloride, polyvinyl ethylene and a few others. We generally don't heat the stuff much above its glass-transition state when bending and certainly don't use temperatures such as you use but it is still fascinating to see the similarities in material behaviour. That giant tube looks awesome to my eyes. Nice job at a complex fabrication!

This is just Fascinating! and BEAUTIFUL! even if it may not be perfect at present, I would still LOVE to own it! You are indeed very talented!

"this is why I love KZread... you get access to people who are 10 times smarter than you..." ... or alternatively, you get the idiotic nonsense that I put in the comments section.

@ayrendraganas8686

3 жыл бұрын

Beautiful self deprecating humor good sir! Have a nice day ^^

@Konecny_M

3 жыл бұрын

Who said it wasn't sarcasm?

Is it just me who thinks the way it pops/crackles and the numbers half glow before fully lighting is cool in its own way? Fascinating video as always!

Very cool. Dalibor’s tubes are works of art and unlike any of the NOS Soviet tubes around today. They are too expensive for me to explore but I appreciate the craftsmanship that goes into them. I wish him and his company the best success in all their endeavors.

Beautiful work Dalibor! Yes this is why you do proto-types, you learn and make changes until you reach close to perfection. Just amazing work you are doing. so exciting to see all of your hard work coming to fruition. Yes there are more problems to solve, but the finished vision is now on the horizon. Gorgeous!

So frickin' awesome Dalibor that new double line cathode is amazing!!! It looks so awesome. You did it man!!!

I love the dark room with all the tubes to test them. It seems like a fun place to chill.

Dalibor: I bought hydraulic press for Nixie tubes prototyping. Audience: The best hydraulic press channel is born!

It’s wonderful to see you learn from your mistakes, I’ve done plenty of it myself. Admitting it openly and getting rapid feedback from your viewers is genius ! I love how you are recreating and exploring the earliest display form when LCD / LED etc has eclipsed most tube displays. I saw a Nixie tube clock in a show recently and hoped it was one of yours !

I think I heard the collective cry of people around the world at 15:55. My heart definitely cracked!) Props for keeping your cool!

Well done Dalibor!!! This is significant milestone towards your Nixie Tube Factory vision. I know you have been studying the 5s system, that is fantastic. You should look into the Kanban system for scaling into your factory. We need more Nixie Tubes, you are a visionary!!! My inspiration!!!

This is amazing!

@xcruell

3 жыл бұрын

Oh yes it is my friend

Ah finally! Now development continues but we have great hope you will solve these problems.

I think you can get away with much thinner forming tools and safe a lot of filament in the process. I made a couple PLA forms to use in a DIY press - well below 20T, but hundreds of kilos for sure. After my inital tools worked well with a 10mm bottom I cut the bottom thickness down step by step and noticed that it works just the same with a 3mm base thickness but printed at 100%.

Your patience and persistence is inspiring !

Keep at it Dalibor, Rome was not built in a day and if it were not for the dedication of craftsmen like you I would not have made my R|Z568M clock

This is my first encounter with this channel - Awesome work! I love this kind of stuff. I think it's a lot like when they say 'no one person in the world knows every single step to make a pencil' - the graphite magicians don't do forestry and woodworking or rubber eraser or metal fab or glue formulation to hold it together. This is a similar scale project, the metal, fab, glass, and gas work are all crazy specialist and I love that you have them all under one roof!

Your prototyping capabilities are absolutely remarkable

Quite an accomplishment, so close to perfect, I am sure 100% success will come very soon. Congratulations on making the world's largest nixie and the first with an outline font!

Dont give up. You're pushing your limits and that's great. Thanks!

Beautiful Item !!! wonderful ... state of the art !!! only one word : class !!! eric from France .

I love seeing all your iterations and testing! Experience is the best teacher.

Thank you for these. They are honest, enjoyable, educational and thoroughly fascinating.

Je vidět, že vyrobit fungující velký digitron je opravdu věda. Držím Vám palce!

A little suggestion - you setup the digits on 2 shafts. It look nice but with this size its risky to short circuit by any movement applied to the lamp, probably even vibration of closing the door can cause a lot of sparks and dead electronics. You could try to avoid this by setting up digits on 4 or 6 shafts(cross or hexagon).

@Papinak2

3 жыл бұрын

I was thinking the same. Digits of this size should have better support. But designing such digits might be issue. Maybe some insulated support wire stretching from side to side?

@user-ut4vl8bw2k

3 жыл бұрын

@@Papinak2wow I didn't think about it first, but you totally right. Digits are not symmetrical and it is impossible to set it on 4 supports. I can imagine few solutions but all of them required really Hight-tech stuff and very hard to made by hands.

It's amazing to follow your work and how you continously optimize every step to get the best results. For me it's unbelievable that you can use 3d printed parts in a press. Awesome work.

Hello Dalibor, I'm again amazed how elegantly you solved so much issues since I visited you a month ago. In the video I was nervous like never before in youtube video, when you broke that thin tube to evacuate air. Keep up the good work!

So excited to finally see a prototype! We've been looking at parts and plans for so long now, I was wondering when we'd see even a partially working version, and here we finally are!

Fantastic work. I admire your perserverance on this project.

Here you have it glowing ! Great perseverance for a great success. Congrats !

Looks beautilful, love your work. Thank you very much for sharing the whole process from the design stage to the first working prototype.

That glow reflection from the back disk looks great... with the zero digit almost like Sauron's eye! :)

Congratulations, you are moving to succes very quickly!

Watching this while healing 3 of my poisoned 5660M nixies! One day I'll have a set of your tubes. Keep up the great work!

Amazing job, as usual. I'm thrilled to see this technology being revived and expanded on. Keep up the good work!

I love folks who follow through on their video series.

That is so cool.. thank you for showing us!! Good luck working with the issues

i simply love the content it helps me relax to watch you work and keeps my love of nixie tubes and their uses alive keep up the GREAT WORK!!!!

Simply awesome work, I cannot begin to imagine how you felt when that glass snapped off at the base but you fixed it and got it working. Keep it up!

They will be so beautiful. Can't wait to see the final wall.

I admire your determination and drive, keep going and you will succeed. Thanks for sharing your journey.

Nice to see an artisan at work. I missed it.

Despite the flaws it is coming together nicely. Keep going and you will make a fantastic display!

Beautiful work. I was completely engrossed. "Endeavor to Persevere" Dalibor.

Amazing, glad to see the working prototype! Looking forward to another episodes. Also I like you are holding to a saying:"Golden czech hands" as I see many items in your workshop custom made.

Looks good. Great progress! I think a good way to do it is a ring of small jet in a ring or circle with 360 degree coverage or maybe a small “window” to see. Either more jets or bigger. More I think is better to isolate the heat to smaller area on the glass. More jets spreads out heat better for production.

Incredibly beautiful!

Looking good! Can't wait to see the beautiful end result.

Klobouk dolů Dalibore. Moc pěkná práce ;-)

This is very exciting! Magnificent work.

I celebrate your perseverance and success! This is a beautiful thing that deserves to exist. Great job manifesting dream to reality.

just fascinating. I'm sure you will get it working.

I only found you today and have looked at a number of your videos - suffice it to say you are a glowing light ;) in your field - your dedication to quality is so pleasurable to watch and i sincerely hope you succeed in your stunning work , quality like this is a rarity and for any of your setbacks not only do you learn, which is obvious by your mature dissection of your own work but we learn from you not just in your engineering skill but your tenacity and dedication to a product, a piece of art, a symbol of a bygone era ( but hopefully not for long ) - good skill in your endeavours and hope to see the finished article pre 2021 ;) !

Absolutely amazing video!

This is amazing! Congratulations!

Amazing, good luck to solve the problems and turn it into a working solution! Thank you

I think I've said this before but I really have to thank you for helping keep this art alive

The machine shop where I used to work did a lot of rubber pad forming. The press was a custom one which produced over 200 tons force and the tooling was made of aluminium.

Your work is incredible as always. Know that we support you in many different ways :)

Maximalni respekt ! Deda byl starej harcovnik z VUSTu, za tohle by te miloval ! Zlaty rucicky !

Great project. Keep you efforts and you will come to the fully working model.

You're using the fly press wrong. You need to have some momentum, that's the reason for the big ball of metal on the opposite side of the handle, when you use it so it's quick and the metal doesn't have time to move. Instead it stretches and forms better. You want to start when the head of the press is a couple of inches away from the mold. Watch videos of them being used and you'll see what i mean. Someone with experience on them can pump simple plates like yours out pretty quick. especially if they're precut to size. Also maybe change your channel name to Ntube or NixieTube

@daliborfarny

3 жыл бұрын

I know :-) the problem is that this one doesnt fly :-) I will need to take it apart, clean and lubricate.. then mount to some steady support.. for a basic idea it was good to usemit as aimwas.. but thank you for the explanation!

@re_Create

3 жыл бұрын

​@@daliborfarny To prevent the buckling of sheet metal, it's useful to clamp the surrounding material to the stamping die. The friction prevents the surrounding material to get pulled closer to the center (where the diameter is smaller, so it buckles). Instead, the material needs to stretches exactly at the step. The rubber pad does somthing very similar.

@pldaniels

3 жыл бұрын

...but what happens when he starts building other amazing projects that aren't nixie tubes? Relevant names are useful at the start, however once you already have a tremendous level of associated search / linking it doesn't matter so much. Right now if I search for "nixie tube", Dalibor is the first hit.

No Words..... A true Geniuuuuss....!!👍👍

That tube is really a piece of art! Perhaps you could control the glow around the connection wires by adding a better insulator to the back of the anode - a sheet of mica perhaps or some powder-coating on the backside of the anode. As soon as the electrical distance between the anode and the wire gets larger, it should be the cathodes which turn on first and clamp the voltage.

@uwezimmermann5427

3 жыл бұрын

...or after placing the wires where they should go, fixing the electrodes, coat the wires with an additional layer of waterglass, a sodium silicate solution in water. When drying it forms a layer of sodium silicate, essentially glass.

I know its not suppose to but i really like the aesthetic of the flickering tube. Great video cant wait to see this perfected!

Great work on what you have achieved. Your Glass tube work is very interesting to watch and hope you have good luck in your next one. Cheers from Australia

incredible amount of patience and persistence👍 .

I love nixies and plasma lamps 💕

Pretty cool result. Congratulations Dalibor! Greetings from Germany 🇩🇪

Looking good , you just keep nibbling away at the problems and you will be there.,,cheers,

I’m so happy you are keeping the Nixie tubes alive! This is just beautiful work. I’ve got a small nixie clock I built a few years ago and it always makes me happy to see it glowing away. Maybe I’ll buy some from you, but I might need to take a second mortgage out. :)

I got the email yesterday that my clock shipped. Really looking forward to its delivery. Great job.

Amazing work, bro. I know from your perspective you had a lot of trouble, but you did things that 99% of us would never be able to even attempt. Very cool. I hope that someday we will have the technology to make our own tubes/valves much like 3d printing works today. There are so many esoteric tubes that are no longer made, and one of these days we will no longer be able to find parts to keep all of our cool old hardware working. :

We’re rooting for you. You’ll get it!

0:43 - To prevent buckling, can a thicker sheet metal be used? 20:30 - You think ceramic insulated wires would work? This would prevent shorting. You really do like to keep things very small and compact, perhaps a different design is needed for the wire terminal block which would be much more redundant. You could also use some sort of special foam or glue that is applied to the wires and it insulates the wires terminal block. I would then check a continuity test before and after for no shorts when it goes inside the glass fixture, the foam or glue would prevent the wires at the terminal block to not touch short circuit or move. The amount of effort you put into this is really astounding.

This work is incredible. When I first saw the Making of a Nixie Tube film is vowed to buy one of these beautiful clocks once I has some spare cash (come on investments... mature!) Imagine interning at this place, the skills you would learn.

I think what you are doing is absolutly awsom.. Keep up the good work :)