Dekatron Spinners!

G'day,

So i've fallen in love with the old Russian tubes and what not, so here is something i found.

Its called a Dekatron Tube.

These where used back in the 70's as counting tubes and for display.



The ones i bought have 40 cathodes in a circle and are driven by ~300 - 450VDC




I found this kit on eBay that allows you to spin the dekatron from 12DC @120mA and you can vary the speed with the on-board Pot.

Now this circuit board ca do most octal base dekatron's with a simple rewire of the jumpers on J2/J3.

Only thing i changed was the cycle complete led, which i changed to blue (my favorite)




I bought 2x kits as one of the tubes is filled with argon (OG-3 purple color) and the other with helium neon [color="#d4700"](OG-9 nice orange color[/COLOR])


The kit doesn't take long to solder up and is pretty fun to build

Only thing to watch out for is the high voltage on the board, it does bite pretty nice, i know i've touched it

Here's some photos:










A video in day and night:


Thanks for looking!

Fiddy.

Neat! That looks really cool, does the argon tube really look as pink as the photos make it look?

Very nice. I am amazed how they build lights from old Russian tubes.

ARGLaser said:

Neat! That looks really cool, does the argon tube really look as pink as the photos make it look?

Click to expand...

Yeah it does, i was expecting a color similar to 405nm like other photos I've seen, but its quite different.

Very cool Mitch, I want one :undecided: where did you fin them ?

heres the kit: Dekatron Spinner Kit Variable Speed Parts PCB 12V in No Tube | eBay

The build guide: Variable Dekatron Spinner Kit « Threeneuron's Pile o'Poo

and you can buy the tubes on eBay, OG-3 & OG-8 are argon filled pinky-purple color and OG-4 & OG-9 are helium neon filled orange color.

I read spiders on the title :crackup: