Thanks to viewer Nikolaus we have not one but TWO amazing New-Old-Stock KGM Edgelit Digital Displays! Definitely a bucket list item, and never thought I'd have a pair in the lab, but here we are - so let's get to it!
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#New #Unobtainium #Rare
- Music by Fran Blanche -
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Fran on Twitter - https://twitter.com/contourcorsets
Fran's Science Blog - http://www.frantone.com/designwritings/design_writings.html
FranArt Website - http://www.contourcorsets.com
FRAN, REMEMBER THE "NIXIE-TUBE?" FAN-FRAN, JAMES JMDEVITOIII, GENERAL DYNAMICS;ELECTRONICS DIVISION
there is a german postal code on it aswell a german phonenumber and a city wow it whas indeed distributed over a german company i dont expect to see this kind of informations on it
Well hello Fran! Love your videos! Keep em' coming. You have some really neat display videos. Now I want me some of those nixie tube clocks…😁
Fran – When you get a chance, you should go down to the Independence Seaport Museum and shoot some video. It is a very interesting place and often overlooked in the Philly museum scene.
Designers these days spend far too little time designing beautiful functional numerical fonts. I love this design, maybe because it makes me think of all the Eggcrate gameshow displays from my childhood and earlier.
What stops all the display illuminating are the digits small drill points or am I missing something, can anyone explain, or I’ll never sleep again
This is a really cool display, I love the way the elements are nested together, and the pointed adjustment screw for pressing them lightly against each other. One can almost see the 3D printing folks thinking, "Hmmm".
There was a brief touch on using a gel filter to change the colour*¹ as displayed. While probably intended to make this look like a Nixie, for the love of peat*² why, this is an idea that could be further exploited beyond incandescent sources. For those of us incessant disassemblers who lived through the VFD calculator era, blue and green filters to push the spectra a little bit sideways were ubiquitous. This can also be used to change the color of other phosphor based displays, not only Nimo and some color LEDs*³, but also VFD. We don't have to be resigned to the classic colors because "that's how it's always been done" either. Crank up a display and play with some filters, the weirder the better!
*¹ The subject is a British display.
*² Misspelling intended.
*³ … though it may be a sacrilege for some of these vintage displays…
There's significant mirroring between the planes. I thought other displays used coating to minimize that. I am under the impression that the digits are all dots instead of solid-engraving to minimize "self illumination" between planes. If that's true, then please tell the folks re-creating this technology to learn from experience!
I'm sure IEE made similar displays. If only we could go back in time with a camcorder to save their trade show booth with all those runnign demos, such as "fruit machine" (one arm bandit) with colored bulbs per symbol!
I had something like this in mind several years ago bidding on an engraving pantograph. I thought that it would be awesome using UV LEDs and that fluorescent "orange" acrylic that seems to light up just sitting on a table.
Interesting that the numbers are sequential back to front .. As I understood, Nixie cathode placement was thought out to allow maximum view of each digit, but that doesn't seem to matter much here.
Here's a project for you Fran: Never mind those digital fish tanks and fire places. Betcha lots of us nerds would pay for a montage of all your displays doing their thing in an endless loop. 😀
The crowdfunded "Gixie tube" imitation nixie tube clock project from a couple years back works on exactly the same principle as this, but with LEDs. The variety of these old non-7-segment number displays is amazing.
Haha! It arrived! Finally! 🙂
Nice you had all the necessary bulbs. I only had four but never tried it. So nice it all worked out!
And look at that beautiful light conductors in action! Thanks for giving it the spotlight it deserves! 🙂
Well that's a fascinating little display especially because it has those dot is like a nikie tube but way cooler. Thank for show it
Thanks to Nikolaus. Anyone who's watched this channel for a while knows how much you love unusual display tech and then we get to see it too.
That's awesome. Amazing to see how much labor went into the assembly too, lots of machining steps, lots of hand fiddling.. beautiful.