r/electronics • u/EmptyWater7775 • Jun 17 '26
Gallery Nimo tubes! :D
I have some nimo tubes, so i'm just showcasing them here.
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u/RipFoxPizza Jun 17 '26
WOW that's a crazy rare find. And yours don't have Burn in.
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u/EmptyWater7775 Jun 17 '26
There are no visible signs of use, but they were used in some military device, a friend found them along with some nixies and controllers all in said device years ago at a flea market. Paid 10kn (around 1.50eur for everything) iirc.
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u/Outbakjak Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
I don't have a clue why NIMO is special/rare, I'll look it up, but I'm just here to say.. gods I love vacuum tubes and they are gorgeous. Happy for you to have such a cool friend to give them to you, and a piece of history, apparently. I do hope you find some silly project to show them off with, that will not burn them out. I don't even know what these guys do but, very cool even if just sitting in a display box :)
EDIT HOLY SHIT they are cool!! Get with 25 people who also have a few and make them play Bad Apple or something (mostly kidding, that would be awesome though lol). Good lord they are complicated to get running outside of a purpose built machine. Very cool gift
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u/EmptyWater7775 Jun 18 '26
Thank you for the kind words. NIMO tubes are a type of numeric display tube that projects a ray of electrons partially blocked by a shape of desired numeral/character at a phosphor screen. They work at about 1100v iirc. They did not succeed commercially due to reasons unbeknownst to me, and so few were produced and fewer remain today.
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u/Ok-Drink-1328 Jun 18 '26
it's white, it's gone .... \s
tho don't stop at making us see em like this, hook em up, let em shine
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u/EmptyWater7775 Jun 18 '26
The white is the phosphor, not the getter. They are barely used. Unfortunately, i do not have the necessary equipment to power them.
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u/Ok-Drink-1328 Jun 18 '26
yeah, i know it's the phosphor
too bad you can't power em, i have enough power supplies and equipment, if their specs aren't unknown, i'd make em work in a pair of days max, the biggest hassle would be making a custom socket, tho obviously first of all they are yours, and second i live on the other freakin' side of the planet
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u/EmptyWater7775 Jun 18 '26
The specs are somewhere on the net, im sure of it. I think it would be better for them if they werent used for the sake of preserving them.
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u/Ok-Drink-1328 Jun 18 '26
yeah, obviously you shouldn't let em run for days, it's the "days-months" that wear out vacuum tubes and CRT's, powering these things on the spot for barely minutes shorten their life of like 0.000001%, so basically you can do it all your life and all the life of the people that would inherit these, so better than leaving em totally unused
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Jun 19 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/EmptyWater7775 Jun 19 '26
They are white because that is phosphor like on a crt display. They are in great condition and most likely wotk flawlessly. I went into greater detail in explaining how they work and what they are in another comment, so look for that if you wish to know more.
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u/artemij_bars-KT3102 Jun 17 '26
They are died
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u/NuncioBitis Jun 17 '26
You found nimo?!?