i'm not even into electronics to the degree of studying it, but I also see those switches and dials as beautiful little works of art. If I found a box of them they'd likely magpie their way into my collection of oddities, too.
Wow! This really brings me back. I really miss the local Radio Shack... There really is no retail equivalent anymore. Ordering parts online works just fine, don't get me wrong.. But there was something about pouring through the racks and racks of little parts drawers to find the exact part you needed. This settles it. I am officially old.
LOL. I remember walking two miles to Radio Shack back when I was in high school. Usually to find an empty peg, or a "temporarily out of stock" tag instead of my component. Times were so different back late '70s, early '80s. Thanks Fran, though a true nostalgic build would have been on the Radio Shack copper clad board and used the etch resistant rub on stencils and a bowl full of that nasty ferric chloride solutions they used to sell.
We still have a Radioshack where I live.. sort of. Radioshack doesn't operate stores anymore, but it still licenses its name to small local businesses. Our Radioshack is really a Vaughn's Electronics but they still have all the component drawers and racks of soldering supplies, wiring, connectors, components kits, whatever you might need. They even have custom value packs of various components that they got good deals on and threw together. It's glorious.
Watching it to the end, thanks for sharing your insight to template and drill out the case! Tape, pinging, start out with the smallest drill. Brilliant 💯
Hi Fran. Greetings from Canada. Nice little project. For wiring the project boards I use enamel wire which can be nicely layed out. To de-isolate the ends of the wire I use a little rotary tool that has a tip with a centered hole of the wire diameter. The tool is also slotted across so the final diameter towards the bare copper wire. See this way you can lay out your board exactly as you want it and wire it very neatly. Back in the days when I was a professional circuit developer we used this method for all prototyping. Thanks for the nice video. Lutz
We never had a Leroy lettering kit we would use a Dymo embossed letter wheel. I remember getting one as a kid and if it sat still for more than a few minutes it would get labelled! 😂 Great video Fran and an awesome bit of kit.
When I was a young workin' stiff, there was an Olson Electronics place right up the street...Downers Grove, Ill Noise. And on the other (east) end of the same town was a Radio Shack. Olson shut down in the late 70s, Radio Shack's been giving off dying quivers the last 10 years...in fact, I don't know if there are any left. The last one I visited was actually a family run appliance store who just happened to carry some R.S. stuff. It's gone now, because nobody in this part of the country (I live in Missouri now) hobby builds anything but hay bailers and manure spreaders. Sad. Buy the way, Thanks for sharing the build, Fran.
I totally love this video. It reminded me of a build project I did back in the early 90's - a complicated model rocket launch controller, with options for internal vs. external power and using a 555 circuit as the brains for a 30-second launch safety timeout for controlling up to 8 launch pads. Like you, I drew everything out and it all "should" have worked as planned, however discoveries were made, and lessons learned, along the way. Thanks for your awesome videos and look forward to seeing more.
I had some incandescent versions of these as a kid in the early 70's. They were part of a big bunch of surplus electronics that we got from the Navy somehow- I went to school in Arlington, VA and someone's dad was probably responsible for disposing of this stuff. He packed it up and gave it to high school electronics classes. There was a bunch of cool stuff in these boxes- lot of servos, lvdt's, resolvers, etc, my teacher didn't know what to do with and let anyone have it if they were curious enough to play with it. I wish I had appreciated it more- it all got tossed many years ago in an attic cleanup when I went off to college around 1975.. These little displays did indeed exist with incandescent lamps- probably 5 years before LED's were common. They used "grain of wheat" lamps, the equivalent of a T-1 led- 3 mm. They were built the same way, plastic front optical unit that spread out the fibers to the dots, an aluminum heat sink layer and a perpendicular board that had a 7447 type device on it. On the back was an edge connector. They were a very standard military display module (DESC part numbe6 probably) that were used in a lot of different gear especially Navy shipboard stuff. I ran into the led version later in my career as an engineer at SAIC working on a submarine radiation monitoring instrument (IM-239). This was the main readout. It used a 4 digit version that was really expensive- when we won the contract to manufacture the first few hundred of these units, we applied to the Navy under a "value engineering" clause that said if we could take cost out the unit without affecting performance, we could split the savings with the government. We replaced this 4 digit assembly with an inhouse made board with 4 MAN-1A displays, resistors and a decoders in a compatible package for the 4 units. This was something like a $500 savings to the Navy. I think the originals were made by Dialight and probably others. I can imagine the tooling was something that had the fibers brought to the front though some holes with some stick out and then bundled back to the seven lamp locations and left long. After getting this all fixtured, it was filled with some kind of resin/plastic and then milled/polished to complete the assembly of the optical unit after tapping the four corners with #2-56 hardware. I wish I still had them. Nice blast from the past. These is probably an active NSN (national stock number) for these in the Navy logistics system. They were very reliable and very readable. I really enjoy and share your fascination with old display technology. It took a long time to get where we are.
I love to watch you design and problem solve. I recall labeling up an audio amplifier front panel in the '70's - brushed and caustic-etched aluminium with rub-down lettering. It was branded 'LETRASET' in the UK, I loved it, lots if fonts and sizes available. Modern printers have spoiled us. I believe we even had Radio Shack in the UK for a while. You can get stuff on line but it's just not the same: miss the smell of components out-gassing...
Enjoyed the video and retro construction, thanks. I know what you mean about it being nerve wracking when you first apply power. If I'm worried or using expensive parts, I power it first from a tightly current limited bench supply, and also test the newly built project's power supply before connecting it through to the circuit. "There are no rules with breadboarding" - another slogan for my wall!
Nice idea! I'm learning to solder and this was exactly the idea I had. I have a 1970s tube ham radio and it inspired me to learn to solder and build older projects.
I love these videos even though I have little to no idea what you are talking about. You are cool and nerdy at the same time (compliment). Keep making them and I'll keep watching them.
I love how you used vintage parts and the case to give it a vintage look! I’m all about that ! I just got into your videos about a week ago and I enjoy them very much. Thanks for the informative videos! I love you’re creativity as well making your own circuit designs. Kept up the good work!-Chris
What a beautiful build Fran! I had a similar sort of situation. I built a simple Arduino on a breadboard from the "essential only" parts and the USB "fob" I got did not allow the chip to be reprogrammed after one time unless it sat unpowered. I put a pull down resistor (220K is what I used) from Gnd to Pin 1 (reset/PC6) of the Atmega 168 and it now resets properly and I can reprogram it all day long. The USB board was China made. Don't get me wrong, I love Chinese made things. You just need to tweak them now and again. Or reinforce them if it is something mechanical.
Fond project memories! In high school (late 70's, early 80's), I found a Simplex solenoid operated clock in the junkroom in Radio TV repair class and the instructor inspired me to set it up to operate. With his guidance, I used a pair of diodes to clip low voltage line to a 0.7V square wave, amplified with a single transistor and used that as clock feeding a series of 4017 dividers configured to divide by 6 then 10 then 6 then 10, yielding one pulse per minute. That pulse drove another transistor which in turn drove the clock's solenoid. It worked! I found that, compared to my awesome TI digital watch, instantaneous accuracy was good, but not great. Any given minute would likely be long or short by a fraction of second, but long term, it was very good. This of course is how the power company does things. If they run over frequency for a period, they will compensate by running under frequency for a similar period of time. This was such a fun and memorable project that only recently, I found a similar clock on eBay and plan to replicate the project, though I have considered disciplining the clock to WWV or GPS.
Wow! This sure takes me back. I started building circuits in 6th grade in the late '60's, and had no patience for perf-board, much less for taking the 1:1 images from the magazines and making PCBs. No, I became expert at doing dead-bug construction directly to the walls of the case, using hot-melt glue when possible and epoxy when necessary (generally on the repair pass, when heat dissipation melted the hot-melt glue). When the right case wasn't available, I'd whip one up from balsa or poster board or even cardboard, then use Bondo and acrylic paint to make it purdy. I think these activities fostered my great 3D visualization skills, being able to picture the entire assembly in my mind, with little need for drawings. in 1970 I lucked into a trove of large wire-wrap sockets, and my construction rate exploded, with very few solder joints. Everything got shoved into sockets, including passives, and held in place with hot-melt when the leads weren't grasped well enough by the pins. I'd even use wire-nuts when safe and practical to further minimize soldering. I'd hacksaw or tin-snip the sockets to size, often cutting out the center to get rows of wire-wrap headers. This technique became extremely useful when I started using 4000-series CMOS parts without an anti-static mat (just a grounding strap), greatly reducing my "killed during fabrication" rate. It also made it easy to re-use parts without de-soldering (I'd build circuits just to do it, not to keep them). These days I'm even less patient, and will get the part count as close to zero as possible by writing software for an AVR or PIC, then adding external drivers/shifters as needed. I can't even count the number of one-hour AT-Tiny builds I've done.
I haven't seen Numitron displays since the 1970s. Smaller versions than yours were install in sockets on Inertial Navigation System Displays that I worked on installed in airliners. This isn't the first time you've jogged my memory with old parts, tools and devices. I'm going to start referring to this channel as The Flashback Channel.
Just discovered your channel a few weeks back. I've recently gotten into electronics and still very novice. Your videos have been really fun to watch and has given me inspiration to do more. Just thought I would share. :)
Fran you do great finish work on cases. I had to buy a milling machine to make up for my inadequate finish work. Cheers. This is also well timed. Not directly related to Numitron but I'm designing something I've wanted to do with Nixie tubes for a very long time and this gave me some inspiration as I'm recovering from a bout of burnout.
Oh the memories, you are doing now what I did in the '60s, '70s, and '80s. Do any of those buttons say PANIC on them? One joke in my lab was a button "Halt and catch fire." Later used as a title for a TV series about Silicon Valley. About that Numitron display, in about 1972 I was in Mike Quinn Electronics (now defunct) in Oakland, California, where I spotted some 3-inch tall neon discharge displays that had the standard seven segments with additional diagonal. They were not Nixie tubes but very much like them. I bought seven of them, still have them somewhere but have not seen them in 15 years. My plan was to build a clock but marriage, kids, computers, and life got in the way
Hey Fran, have you thought of using the Nimo tubes you got on your "Mega Haul" and adding them to your single tube display, to make a clock. Since you already had success with the one why not go further with it, I bet there has already been times while you were watching TV that the single Nimo was more entertaining than what was on TV, just think what multiple tubes would look like in a darkened room.
Two tips for drilling thin sheet metal, especially aluminum. The first is easy and is to "dub" the drill. This means grinding just a little at the cutting edges so they have zero rake. This produces a cleaner hole and prevents the bit from grabbing and spiraling in. The other is to do a "lip and spur" grind on the drill. This is a cousin to the wood Forstner bits. These also don't grab and cut an extremely clean hole because, except for the "spur" in the center, it cuts the hole at the outside edge first.
I've been wanting something like this for a while. and i've got a plastic 1U rack enclosure... i think i see a project in my future... And holy crow... that paint-to-locate-hole-placement trick is super helpful!!
It has been entertaining and informative watching your videos! Having just built a 70's style, AC sync pure TTL clock from scratch, I now think I have a bug or something as I want to find and build more with anything with the vintage feel. I feel that I am addicted and I am on the hunt old display technology! (nixie, numitron, panaplex, vfd, edge lit - hoarding come to mind LOL) That being said, I am going to watch out for your upcoming retro clock stuff to see what you create! (I also was lucky to find some IEE FD-21's.....beautiful aren't they)? I like that counter box you set up! I was thinking similarly recently but with a few de-bounced button signals for developing / troubleshooting, although your hold function may work for that. I am sure you already thought of that. Good stuff and thank you, Jim
Girl You Rock! :) Ur vids are totally awesome. I have always been fascinated with electronics and their components. I love how something so small, combined in the right order with others, can do so much. Any way keep the the wonderful work and stay awesome. :)
I loved that video from u of Penn! Christmas came early for you, dear. Its too bad someone or someone's took a large portion of it before you could get it home to your lab, but you still got enough for years of projects. I also found out you and I are the same age. Dont worry, Fran, you're not getting older, you're like fine wine, you get better with age. 😊
Fran Lab you can still use your labels, but you must use the labels they sell at Walmart Office section that are not for inkjet printers. Those labels you can write with a pen, pencils, magic Markers, etc. They cost about $2 or 3 dollars. To remove labels cleanly use cotton balls with lighter fluid. Wet the label first with a little bit of lighter fluid, wait a minute or two, then peel off. Use a dry cotton ball to dry up lighter fluid and remove any sticky residue.
The simplest thing I do on Labels; (hand drawn and or printed) When the label is ready to put on, before cutting it out or removing the backing apply transparent office tape > That is a Great Way to make the Labels look great and Last a very long time. One can also put the tape on after in several well placed strips and then be very careful and trim the excess with an X-ACTO not to hard and makes for nice instant results. At work there is a few simple label printers, for hobby once you have it a pack of labels lasts a very long time.
Perhaps an idea for the label would be to use dry-transfer lettering (Letraset) for that vintage look. Or perhaps even just embossed Dymo labels for that homemade look.
The switchcraft switches brought back memories of when i installed telephone exchanges, except the ones we used were more square, we knew them as 'relay switches', the contact blocks were based on '3000 type' relays. I often use the holes in a pcb as a template if i want led's through the panel, remembering to shift it over half a hole for centre, i also use printer labels on the front panel to draw any lines ot mark drill positions, if you make a mistake, you're not trying to erase markings, just use another label. They still make the panel mount bushings for mounting led's You could use 'letraset' style for labeling, that's the rub on letters, then apply a thin coat of matt or silk varnish for protection, though you would have to label the panel with no switches etc.
Yeah those Switchcraft switches look great, and with a round mounting hole by the looks of it. I have a large stock of telecom / broadcasting leaf switches similar, but they are the square mounting type as Sparky describes. Consequently, they don't find much use due to the installation difficulties. Which is a shame as they are excellent solid switches & some have really different contact configurations such as make before break etc.
Excellent Video showing good, old school Hand Made ways all done well. Making the experimenter/hobbyist , All Vintage, Retro style build ( Play from > 52:30 and Hear Fran Describe) Now if Fran would put it up for Auction or sale who knows the untold amount a fan might like to contribute/buy with that as a reward gift. Nice eye candy on the Bench and useful instrument.
Loving the channel with old tech and new the projects are great liking the display segments. I have quite a lot of old components as well but none of those. At the moment I'm trying to write some software to write to a FM16W08 fram ic but for some reason I'm losing data and getting zero sometime instead of data but only now and again. Your help or advice would be much appreciated as you seem to know about lots of things. Thanks in advance.
For the Plus/Minus/1 - how about making a binary displayed clock? That would be a true GEEKY project! 16 tubes for hour/minues or 24 tubes if you add seconds as well! Or is my math off...?
Your maths is slightly off. You've assigned 4 tubes to each decimal digit, however the tens of minutes (or seconds) never exceeds 6 digits (0-5) so you only need 3 tubes for them. As for the hours, the tens could be omitted for a 12 hour clock, and would only require 2 tubes anyway. That puts the total at 13 (or 20 with seconds).
Wow! I only recently stumbled onto this channel and can't get enough of it. Fran, these projects really take me back to my hobbiest/experiementer days (although I'm not sure I ever really left them). The old Archer case... Radio Shack transformer... LEDs... breadboards... now THAT'S how you build a project! Thanks for posting these.
Fran Lab you can still use your labels, but you must use the labels they sell at Walmart Office section that are not for inkjet printers. Those labels you can write with a pen, pencils, magic Markers, etc.
People just don't understand us electronics hoarders. A switch being a "work of art", that's what I see too in old electronics.
So, why are you here?
True, this build was great.
i'm not even into electronics to the degree of studying it, but I also see those switches and dials as beautiful little works of art. If I found a box of them they'd likely magpie their way into my collection of oddities, too.
@@cnegrea Like the OPer said, "People don't understand"..............
When watching Fran Lab, everything is fine and the world is in order.
I like these videos because not only learning electronics, but fabrication tricks too.
Back in the 1970s I made a counter using four of these displays. It still works today!
Wow! This really brings me back. I really miss the local Radio Shack... There really is no retail equivalent anymore. Ordering parts online works just fine, don't get me wrong.. But there was something about pouring through the racks and racks of little parts drawers to find the exact part you needed.
This settles it. I am officially old.
LOL. I remember walking two miles to Radio Shack back when I was in high school. Usually to find an empty peg, or a "temporarily out of stock" tag instead of my component. Times were so different back late '70s, early '80s. Thanks Fran, though a true nostalgic build would have been on the Radio Shack copper clad board and used the etch resistant rub on stencils and a bowl full of that nasty ferric chloride solutions they used to sell.
We still have a Radioshack where I live.. sort of. Radioshack doesn't operate stores anymore, but it still licenses its name to small local businesses. Our Radioshack is really a Vaughn's Electronics but they still have all the component drawers and racks of soldering supplies, wiring, connectors, components kits, whatever you might need. They even have custom value packs of various components that they got good deals on and threw together. It's glorious.
Watching it to the end, thanks for sharing your insight to template and drill out the case! Tape, pinging, start out with the smallest drill. Brilliant 💯
I love that you leave in problems and why and how they are resolved.
You really are a rocking person Fran!
Wonderful. Calm, relaxing, nostalgic. Love Fran Blanche
To see your videos feels like coming home. Your videos are super!
Franlab rocks! 👍👍👍👍👍
Fran, you are the best!
You make that work look so easy. Thank you Fran, again for such a fine and delightful video.
Love the video and the project - but please think about a fuse on the AC line. Better safe than smoky.
Smaller transformers sometimes have built in fuse that sometimes trip prematurely due to being so close to the primary windings._
I remember those nice Archer cases. I got one and built a digital clock in mine. I've had it for over thirty years. The clock still works.
Loved this. Can't remember how many times I tripped over a function of a chip.
Hi Fran. Greetings from Canada. Nice little project. For wiring the project boards I use enamel wire which can be nicely layed out. To de-isolate the ends of the wire I use a little rotary tool that has a tip with a centered hole of the wire diameter. The tool is also slotted across so the final diameter towards the bare copper wire. See this way you can lay out your board exactly as you want it and wire it very neatly. Back in the days when I was a professional circuit developer we used this method for all prototyping. Thanks for the nice video.
Lutz
Using the tape on the back side of the panel to hold your tracing paper in place is a neat trick. Gonna have to remember that.
We never had a Leroy lettering kit we would use a Dymo embossed letter wheel.
I remember getting one as a kid and if it sat still for more than a few minutes it would get labelled! 😂
Great video Fran and an awesome bit of kit.
I like that handle on your center punch! I'm totally stealing that idea. You've taught this old dog a new trick.
I just love your vintage approach to your projects!
When I was a young workin' stiff, there was an Olson Electronics place right up the street...Downers Grove, Ill Noise.
And on the other (east) end of the same town was a Radio Shack. Olson shut down in the late 70s, Radio Shack's
been giving off dying quivers the last 10 years...in fact, I don't know if there are any left. The last one I visited was
actually a family run appliance store who just happened to carry some R.S. stuff. It's gone now, because nobody in
this part of the country (I live in Missouri now) hobby builds anything but hay bailers and manure spreaders.
Sad. Buy the way, Thanks for sharing the build, Fran.
Thanks for sharing, Fran. Enjoy the channel. Oh, don't forget a fuse, especially in mains power devices.
I totally love this video. It reminded me of a build project I did back in the early 90's - a complicated model rocket launch controller, with options for internal vs. external power and using a 555 circuit as the brains for a 30-second launch safety timeout for controlling up to 8 launch pads. Like you, I drew everything out and it all "should" have worked as planned, however discoveries were made, and lessons learned, along the way. Thanks for your awesome videos and look forward to seeing more.
Wow!!!!!
That packing tape trick!!!!!!
AMAZING!!!!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!
I had some incandescent versions of these as a kid in the early 70's. They were part of a big bunch of surplus electronics that we got from the Navy somehow- I went to school in Arlington, VA and someone's dad was probably responsible for disposing of this stuff. He packed it up and gave it to high school electronics classes. There was a bunch of cool stuff in these boxes- lot of servos, lvdt's, resolvers, etc, my teacher didn't know what to do with and let anyone have it if they were curious enough to play with it. I wish I had appreciated it more- it all got tossed many years ago in an attic cleanup when I went off to college around 1975.. These little displays did indeed exist with incandescent lamps- probably 5 years before LED's were common. They used "grain of wheat" lamps, the equivalent of a T-1 led- 3 mm. They were built the same way, plastic front optical unit that spread out the fibers to the dots, an aluminum heat sink layer and a perpendicular board that had a 7447 type device on it. On the back was an edge connector. They were a very standard military display module (DESC part numbe6 probably) that were used in a lot of different gear especially Navy shipboard stuff. I ran into the led version later in my career as an engineer at SAIC working on a submarine radiation monitoring instrument (IM-239). This was the main readout. It used a 4 digit version that was really expensive- when we won the contract to manufacture the first few hundred of these units, we applied to the Navy under a "value engineering" clause that said if we could take cost out the unit without affecting performance, we could split the savings with the government. We replaced this 4 digit assembly with an inhouse made board with 4 MAN-1A displays, resistors and a decoders in a compatible package for the 4 units. This was something like a $500 savings to the Navy. I think the originals were made by Dialight and probably others. I can imagine the tooling was something that had the fibers brought to the front though some holes with some stick out and then bundled back to the seven lamp locations and left long. After getting this all fixtured, it was filled with some kind of resin/plastic and then milled/polished to complete the assembly of the optical unit after tapping the four corners with #2-56 hardware. I wish I still had them. Nice blast from the past. These is probably an active NSN (national stock number) for these in the Navy logistics system. They were very reliable and very readable. I really enjoy and share your fascination with old display technology. It took a long time to get where we are.
I love to watch you design and problem solve. I recall labeling up an audio amplifier front panel in the '70's - brushed and caustic-etched aluminium with rub-down lettering. It was branded 'LETRASET' in the UK, I loved it, lots if fonts and sizes available. Modern printers have spoiled us. I believe we even had Radio Shack in the UK for a while. You can get stuff on line but it's just not the same: miss the smell of components out-gassing...
Enjoyed the video and retro construction, thanks. I know what you mean about it being nerve wracking when you first apply power. If I'm worried or using expensive parts, I power it first from a tightly current limited bench supply, and also test the newly built project's power supply before connecting it through to the circuit.
"There are no rules with breadboarding" - another slogan for my wall!
Nice idea! I'm learning to solder and this was exactly the idea I had. I have a 1970s tube ham radio and it inspired me to learn to solder and build older projects.
I love your enthusiasm!
An excellent project - thank you for sharing the build process. :)
Thanks for firing up my imagination. You are pure gold - cheers
So awesome! I wish I could build things like this.
I love these videos even though I have little to no idea what you are talking about. You are cool and nerdy at the same time (compliment). Keep making them and I'll keep watching them.
I love how you used vintage parts and the case to give it a vintage look! I’m all about that ! I just got into your videos about a week ago and I enjoy them very much. Thanks for the informative videos! I love you’re creativity as well making your own circuit designs. Kept up the good work!-Chris
What a beautiful build Fran! I had a similar sort of situation. I built a simple Arduino on a breadboard from the "essential only" parts and the USB "fob" I got did not allow the chip to be reprogrammed after one time unless it sat unpowered. I put a pull down resistor (220K is what I used) from Gnd to Pin 1 (reset/PC6) of the Atmega 168 and it now resets properly and I can reprogram it all day long. The USB board was China made. Don't get me wrong, I love Chinese made things. You just need to tweak them now and again. Or reinforce them if it is something mechanical.
Fond project memories! In high school (late 70's, early 80's), I found a Simplex solenoid operated clock in the junkroom in Radio TV repair class and the instructor inspired me to set it up to operate. With his guidance, I used a pair of diodes to clip low voltage line to a 0.7V square wave, amplified with a single transistor and used that as clock feeding a series of 4017 dividers configured to divide by 6 then 10 then 6 then 10, yielding one pulse per minute. That pulse drove another transistor which in turn drove the clock's solenoid. It worked! I found that, compared to my awesome TI digital watch, instantaneous accuracy was good, but not great. Any given minute would likely be long or short by a fraction of second, but long term, it was very good. This of course is how the power company does things. If they run over frequency for a period, they will compensate by running under frequency for a similar period of time. This was such a fun and memorable project that only recently, I found a similar clock on eBay and plan to replicate the project, though I have considered disciplining the clock to WWV or GPS.
Very good project, congratulations
The trick with the packing tape, ingenious! I'll definitely use that trick some time.
Watching this in the same shirt, which arrived today, which makes me feel extra nerdy. :-D Love the shirt design by the way.
Wow! This sure takes me back. I started building circuits in 6th grade in the late '60's, and had no patience for perf-board, much less for taking the 1:1 images from the magazines and making PCBs.
No, I became expert at doing dead-bug construction directly to the walls of the case, using hot-melt glue when possible and epoxy when necessary (generally on the repair pass, when heat dissipation melted the hot-melt glue). When the right case wasn't available, I'd whip one up from balsa or poster board or even cardboard, then use Bondo and acrylic paint to make it purdy. I think these activities fostered my great 3D visualization skills, being able to picture the entire assembly in my mind, with little need for drawings.
in 1970 I lucked into a trove of large wire-wrap sockets, and my construction rate exploded, with very few solder joints. Everything got shoved into sockets, including passives, and held in place with hot-melt when the leads weren't grasped well enough by the pins. I'd even use wire-nuts when safe and practical to further minimize soldering. I'd hacksaw or tin-snip the sockets to size, often cutting out the center to get rows of wire-wrap headers.
This technique became extremely useful when I started using 4000-series CMOS parts without an anti-static mat (just a grounding strap), greatly reducing my "killed during fabrication" rate. It also made it easy to re-use parts without de-soldering (I'd build circuits just to do it, not to keep them).
These days I'm even less patient, and will get the part count as close to zero as possible by writing software for an AVR or PIC, then adding external drivers/shifters as needed. I can't even count the number of one-hour AT-Tiny builds I've done.
I haven't seen Numitron displays since the 1970s. Smaller versions than yours were install in sockets on Inertial Navigation System Displays that I worked on installed in airliners. This isn't the first time you've jogged my memory with old parts, tools and devices. I'm going to start referring to this channel as The Flashback Channel.
Incredible video and project!
Great job Fran.......Very interesting.
Thanks Fran! I remember using DYMO Labels and a nibbling tool for rectangular holes on many such 1970s era aluminum boxed projects.
A very nice build indeed Fran!
This was a really lovely and entertaining build
Brilliant, Beautiful Fran!
Love the videos especially this last one. Yep you can see the work it takes to put into this kind of build video so well done!
Just discovered your channel a few weeks back. I've recently gotten into electronics and still very novice. Your videos have been really fun to watch and has given me inspiration to do more. Just thought I would share. :)
I really like your channel, I’ve been repairing computers since 1970. So retro, reminds me of the good old days.
You mean it reminds you of when you could get out of a chair without making a groaning noise.
Fran you do great finish work on cases. I had to buy a milling machine to make up for my inadequate finish work. Cheers. This is also well timed. Not directly related to Numitron but I'm designing something I've wanted to do with Nixie tubes for a very long time and this gave me some inspiration as I'm recovering from a bout of burnout.
Wow. Amazing stash you got there!!
Oh the memories, you are doing now what I did in the '60s, '70s, and '80s. Do any of those buttons say PANIC on them? One joke in my lab was a button "Halt and catch fire." Later used as a title for a TV series about Silicon Valley. About that Numitron display, in about 1972 I was in Mike Quinn Electronics (now defunct) in Oakland, California, where I spotted some 3-inch tall neon discharge displays that had the standard seven segments with additional diagonal. They were not Nixie tubes but very much like them. I bought seven of them, still have them somewhere but have not seen them in 15 years. My plan was to build a clock but marriage, kids, computers, and life got in the way
I just found your channel and honetly, it made my day. There will be a lot to learn from you. Looking forward to it!
Fran, you're awesome. Love the videos please keep posting.
Nice project. Great video Fran.
I love this channel so much!!! Fran's my jam
Nice build Fran. Thanks for sharing. Joel
Hey Fran, have you thought of using the Nimo tubes you got on your "Mega Haul" and adding them to your single tube display, to make a clock. Since you already had success with the one why not go further with it, I bet there has already been times while you were watching TV that the single Nimo was more entertaining than what was on TV, just think what multiple tubes would look like in a darkened room.
Excellent vid, really enjoyed this one. Looking forward to more in this series.
........ How cool does that look in the background ! two Elephant stamps.
Two tips for drilling thin sheet metal, especially aluminum. The first is easy and is to "dub" the drill. This means grinding just a little at the cutting edges so they have zero rake. This produces a cleaner hole and prevents the bit from grabbing and spiraling in. The other is to do a "lip and spur" grind on the drill. This is a cousin to the wood Forstner bits. These also don't grab and cut an extremely clean hole because, except for the "spur" in the center, it cuts the hole at the outside edge first.
love this 70's projects!! go go go Fran!!
perfect work Fran ,congratulation
I've been wanting something like this for a while. and i've got a plastic 1U rack enclosure... i think i see a project in my future...
And holy crow... that paint-to-locate-hole-placement trick is super helpful!!
Great project! Love it.
Looks real good. And I love those long videos.
Thanks for the post, great style. When you create the permanent faceplate label, I suggest changing the text 'D', 'C', 'B', 'A' to '8', '4', '2', '1'.
It has been entertaining and informative watching your videos! Having just built a 70's style, AC sync pure TTL clock from scratch, I now think I have a bug or something as I want to find and build more with anything with the vintage feel. I feel that I am addicted and I am on the hunt old display technology! (nixie, numitron, panaplex, vfd, edge lit - hoarding come to mind LOL) That being said, I am going to watch out for your upcoming retro clock stuff to see what you create! (I also was lucky to find some IEE FD-21's.....beautiful aren't they)? I like that counter box you set up! I was thinking similarly recently but with a few de-bounced button signals for developing / troubleshooting, although your hold function may work for that. I am sure you already thought of that. Good stuff and thank you, Jim
great project and video its given me ideas for projects thanks
Girl You Rock! :) Ur vids are totally awesome. I have always been fascinated with electronics and their components. I love how something so small, combined in the right order with others, can do so much. Any way keep the the wonderful work and stay awesome. :)
Excellent work! I need a device very similar as I am planning to work with various displays myself.
Interesting and amusing video to watch, those 55 minutes went by quickly so it seems.
Thanks for sharing.
Great project! I love your passion for vintage electronics.. :)
I loved that video from u of Penn! Christmas came early for you, dear. Its too bad someone or someone's took a large portion of it before you could get it home to your lab, but you still got enough for years of projects. I also found out you and I are the same age. Dont worry, Fran, you're not getting older, you're like fine wine, you get better with age. 😊
Fran Lab you can still use your labels, but you must use the labels they sell at Walmart Office section that are not for inkjet printers. Those labels you can write with a pen, pencils, magic Markers, etc. They cost about $2 or 3 dollars.
To remove labels cleanly use cotton balls with lighter fluid. Wet the label first with a little bit of lighter fluid, wait a minute or two, then peel off. Use a dry cotton ball to dry up lighter fluid and remove any sticky residue.
Cool project. Looking forward to the Retro Bench series. =)
Love this kind of vid... More please!
I really enjoyed that video. The project had the right complexity and was well demonstrated and explained. Nice!
Fantastic build 😁 really interesting and useful tips in there.
The first power up is always a moment of truth.
great vid fran, nice work,
You're face and manner just say's it all :)
just overflowing with excitement :)
This is by far one of your coolest videos yet! Hope to see more. If I had your lab & parts I'd never leave.
Very Interesting Machine
The simplest thing I do on Labels; (hand drawn and or printed) When the label is ready to put on, before cutting it out or removing the backing apply transparent office tape > That is a Great Way to make the Labels look great and Last a very long time.
One can also put the tape on after in several well placed strips and then be very careful and trim the excess with an X-ACTO not to hard and makes for nice instant results.
At work there is a few simple label printers, for hobby once you have it a pack of labels lasts a very long time.
Cool project!
I love technology, always and forever....
You should try waterslide decals. I use them as headstock decals and on my cigar box amp control panels. They are really easy to make and use.
Perhaps an idea for the label would be to use dry-transfer lettering (Letraset) for that vintage look. Or perhaps even just embossed Dymo labels for that homemade look.
Letraset would look so good!
Thank You Fran, your percervence is humbling.
Speaking of 70's build styles (actually 1980 to be specific)... do you remember those Hobby-Blox modular breadboarding kits made by AP Products?
The switchcraft switches brought back memories of when i installed telephone exchanges, except the ones we used were more square, we knew them as 'relay switches', the contact blocks were based on '3000 type' relays.
I often use the holes in a pcb as a template if i want led's through the panel, remembering to shift it over half a hole for centre, i also use printer labels on the front panel to draw any lines ot mark drill positions, if you make a mistake, you're not trying to erase markings, just use another label.
They still make the panel mount bushings for mounting led's
You could use 'letraset' style for labeling, that's the rub on letters, then apply a thin coat of matt or silk varnish for protection, though you would have to label the panel with no switches etc.
Yeah those Switchcraft switches look great, and with a round mounting hole by the looks of it. I have a large stock of telecom / broadcasting leaf switches similar, but they are the square mounting type as Sparky describes. Consequently, they don't find much use due to the installation difficulties. Which is a shame as they are excellent solid switches & some have really different contact configurations such as make before break etc.
Excellent Video showing good, old school Hand Made ways all done well.
Making the experimenter/hobbyist , All Vintage, Retro style build ( Play from > 52:30 and Hear Fran Describe) Now if Fran would put it up for Auction or sale who knows the untold amount a fan might like to contribute/buy with that as a reward gift. Nice eye candy on the Bench and useful instrument.
Loving the channel with old tech and new the projects are great liking the display segments.
I have quite a lot of old components as well but none of those.
At the moment I'm trying to write some software to write to a FM16W08 fram ic but for some reason I'm losing data and getting zero sometime instead of data but only now and again. Your help or advice would be much appreciated as you seem to know about lots of things. Thanks in advance.
For the Plus/Minus/1 - how about making a binary displayed clock? That would be a true GEEKY project! 16 tubes for hour/minues or 24 tubes if you add seconds as well! Or is my math off...?
Your maths is slightly off. You've assigned 4 tubes to each decimal digit, however the tens of minutes (or seconds) never exceeds 6 digits (0-5) so you only need 3 tubes for them. As for the hours, the tens could be omitted for a 12 hour clock, and would only require 2 tubes anyway. That puts the total at 13 (or 20 with seconds).
Your channel makes me happy Fran. Thank you!
Wow! I only recently stumbled onto this channel and can't get enough of it. Fran, these projects really take me back to my hobbiest/experiementer days (although I'm not sure I ever really left them). The old Archer case... Radio Shack transformer... LEDs... breadboards... now THAT'S how you build a project! Thanks for posting these.
I imagine a episode with you and Techmoan... Would be VERY nice!
Fran Lab you can still use your labels, but you must use the labels they sell at Walmart Office section that are not for inkjet printers. Those labels you can write with a pen, pencils, magic Markers, etc.