Dieter's
Super Simple
EZ10A Dekatron- Spinner Project
last update (and finished): November-01-2003

Click here for German Version!!!

Back to Dieter's Nixie Tube Page

Email to Dieter

I got some Elesta EZ10A Dekatrons lately. I took some pictures and posted to the NEONIXIES Forum that I would like to do a simple schematic for a scaler or spinner for this nice glowing tube.

You may check out that tubes here:
EZ10A Pictures And Technical Data

Jason Harper @ NEONIXIES answered:

Dieter, I'm not sure if this actually qualifies as a "scaler", but it
should be easy enough to spin that EZ10A at a fixed rate (1/20 of your
line frequency).  You'd need a HV DC supply (generated however is
convenient), and a transformer secondary producing about 15-30 VAC.
Connect HV+ to the tube anode via a resistor, HV- to the secondary's
center tap if it has one (either end, if it doesn't).  Connect one end
of the secondary to the two guide cathode pins, and the other end to the
ten main cathode pins.
Jason Harper

I made a very simple sketch of Jason's description in 2 minutes or so:



A.J. Franzman also had an idea:

You already have a dual-primary transformer, why not just a simple
cascade running from one primary winding?  It will see ~115V
regardless of which of the two mains inputs is used.  This way all
you need is a DPDT switch to configure the primary windings to
parallel or series configuration, and you're set!
A.J.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I had to figure out the data of the tube, what I did. The results were:

I also checked Jason's schematic, changed it a little bit.
And it worked very well. The EZ10A spinned very nice!

It was just a experiment, and it looked like this:
(taken with a simple Sony Digital Camera in Multipic- Movie- Mode)

Here you can see a detail- picture. Sorry for the low resolution (Bad Sony DSC-P71 Cam)!



The nice purple glow of this tube doesn't come out on this picture. The colour is white-purple.
Morover only 1 dot lights of course, here you can see 4 dots lighted, this is caused by the shutter speed of the camera.

Here you see the schematic I used for this experiment.
I drew it by hand while I was doing the experiment:



I also made a second Experiment, which worked well:

Ok, using this type of transformer is not very nice, I know.
So I like to use the schematic of experiment 1 with a doupler connected to the 230VAC primary winding.
A higher value of R1 is needed then of course!

Conditions of the doubler:
Input Voltage: 230VAC/ 50Hz or 60Hz
Output Voltage: 380VDC
Output Current: 1.5mA

Ok, who develops the schematic for that simple doubler (Delon or Villard) to finish the project.
Remember the basics:

Delon- Doubler:

Villard- Doubler:

October-04-2003:

I've done some experiments, with the schematic, and came up to a very simple one, which works perfectly:

As you can see I used no transformer. A simple voltage divider does good for 230VAC and 115VAC.
It produces 109VAC for the 2stage-villard-droubler. and 24 VAC for the guide- cathodes.
The villard-droubler produces 380VDC for the plate. The two 1.8MOhm resistors are only for dicharging when power is switched off.

October-11-2003:

I had a little time and developed the board- it was very easy.....
here you can see the schematic....

and here you can see the layout.

November-01-2003:

I got the boards from my PCB- manufacturer.
The rest was quit simple. I equipped the board. connected it to the line. And it works well.

This Project is finished
Thanks for reading.

Back to Dieter's Nixie Tube Page

Go to Tube-Tester.com
Email to Dieter
Disclaimer
Impressum

Schlüsselwörter: nixie nixieröhre nixieröhren röhre röhren tube tubes buizen indicator numerical vfd vacuum clock nixieclock uhr readout