How to make cheap and simple Case for Nixie Clock
Assemblying your first Nixie Clock in a simple and cheap Casing
If you are an electronics Geek and by some chance looking for to assembly a Nixie Clock and don’t know where to start, here is an example for you on how you can make your first Nixie Clock Casing. A simple and cheap solution to practice on. Here we’ll talk about a construction of Sase for a 4 Tubes Nixie Clock in a Retro Style to suit the Nixies. We will use a cheap material for the Case, the MDF (medium density fiberboard). In this example I got a dark walnut stain which somewhat resembles a Bakelite finish, but you can use any color you want. Anything you will find in your upstairs closet may be useful, parts from old furniture – chairs, tables etc.
Looking ahead, that what came out in my case for the Case.
Okey, let’s see on the Case. I used here a technique to round up the edges. The piece itself is a 5 inch square piece of MDF. The bottom of it is hollowed out to accommodate the circuit board. You can hollow it by yourself at home with a fretsaw.
What’s next. The Nixie Tubes. You can protect them with glass cover tubes which you can look for for example among medical beakers, cut them down to needed size and then tint them in any desired color, in my case it was an Amber. In this design a red push button in front is also used to select the IF offset. Also a small vent hole over IC driver was made and covered by a small circular piece of perforated metal taken from an old computer speaker. This was made obviously to make a heat exchange for the driver to avoid overheating.
On the photo you can see underside of the housing after it had been hollowed out using a router. This was done using an extremely simple box shaped fretsaw built on a piece of scrap plywood. The jig simply forces the router to stay within a rectangular area within the workpiece. Some final adjustments with the Casse were done by Forstner bits in a small drill press, and also a bit of hand chiseling was made. In the end that came out:
The components of the Clock are shown laid out on the base plate, which is black painted in this case. Note also that the Power Supply is external. As can be seen there is no room at all in this design for a Power Supply and. So an analog Power Supply with a normal transformer can be used and mounted in-line in the power cord much like a laptop computer Power Supply, for example.
Finally assembly of this design shown below.
As can bee seen here the Clock is designed for a Four Tubes. This simple template can be used for Six and even Eight Tubes variants. No limits for your fantasy.
We here at Gra & Afch Design Cases from Wood as well as from the Acrylic.
Our Cases presented in a separate section in our shop.
And you can come visit it and look for yourself anytime: Cases for Nixie Clocks, Nixie Clocks in Cases, Nixie Clocks without Cases, DIY KITs for Nixie Clocks.