Open Nixie Project

Overview

The Open Nixie Project is an open-source initiative to document, develop, and openly share the techniques required to manufacture new nixie tubes — preserving and advancing the art of cold-cathode display manufacturing.

The problem

Nixie tubes were last mass-produced in the early 1990s. The remaining global stock is finite, dwindling, and increasingly expensive. The craft of manufacturing them — glasswork, vacuum technology, cathode chemistry, gas filling — exists today almost entirely as one person's closely-held expertise (Dalibor Farny in Czechia). When that knowledge isn't openly available, the future of these displays depends on a single point of failure.

The goal

Build a publicly accessible body of knowledge — designs, techniques, chemistry, equipment specifications, failure modes — that lets anyone with sufficient skill and patience produce working nixie tubes. The project itself isn't a manufacturer (although I will be manufacturing these tubes). It's a commons.

Scope

In scope: glass envelope fabrication, internal structure design and assembly, cathode coating chemistry, vacuum technology and apparatus, gas mixture formulation, getter selection and activation, aging and quality testing, tooling and jig designs, equipment selection guides, manufacturing process documentation, failure mode analysis.

Out of scope (initially): mass-production scaling, certification, commercial product design, electronics or driver development beyond what's needed to test tubes, business operations.

Phases

The project is planned in three rough phases:

1. Research & literature review. Compile and synthesise existing public knowledge (Dalibor Farny's published work, Soviet/Western manufacturing records, hobbyist forum contributions, academic papers on gas discharge physics). Identify the gaps that need original R&D (this is where I’m at now).
2. Equipment & technique development. Build a working lab capable of producing prototype tubes. Document each subsystem (lampworking, vacuum, chemistry) as it comes online.
3. First production tubes & open publication. Produce repeatable, working tubes. Publish full documentation under an open hardware license. Build the contributor community.

Relationship to Wright Industries

The Open Nixie Project is an open-source project under the Wright Industries umbrella. Wright Industries builds commercial nixie clocks using existing NOS Soviet tubes; the Open Nixie Project develops the long-term replacement supply through open hardware development. Revenue from Wright Industries' clock products funds Open Nixie R&D. Knowledge produced by the Open Nixie Project is freely available to anyone, including other nixie clock makers and tube manufacturers in hopes of finding new techniques and designs, and reducing costs for producers and consumers.

Licensing

Hardware designs, documentation, processes, and chemistry will be released under permissive open hardware licenses (specific licence TBD — likely CERN OHL-W or CC-BY-SA-4.0).

Status

Project is in early planning. Building the literature review and R&D structure first. Public launch deferred until first phase deliverables are concrete.

Project Updates

11/05/2026: Collated Dalibor Farny’s published work from his blog into pages of markdown for easy referencing.

12/05/2026 - 09:00AM: Analyzed Dalibor Farny’s notes on glass-to-metal seals, vacuum gauges, tungsten wire usage, vacuum pumps, and borosilicate glass.

12/05/2026 - 08:39PM: Analyzed Dalibor Farny’s notes on spot welders, his first cathode glow experiment, argon gas, glass-working lathes, high voltage PSU, sealed argon tubes, stainless steel etching, and helium leak detection.

TO DO: Finish analyzing Dalibor Farny’s notes and derive a rough process from his years of research. I aim to use this as a starting point rather than stumbling around trying to replicate what he did from scratch.

TO DO: Set up a website with a connection to Notion as the backend to better display my research notes and document my process.

Research Notes