I believe this to be the first 6 tube Nixie clock designed around the beautiful French F9020AA Nixie Tube. The electronics are modified PV. The clock was built from 6061 aluminum with the custom built colon towers and the majority of the fabrication done by yours truly. The clock is made up of 10 large separate solid aluminum sections, all fastened together by four 5/16" X 3-1/4" SS Hex head socket screws. It is 25" long and 10" tall and weighs in at 37 lbs.!! The picture above gives you an idea of its size as compared to an IN-18-based Jeff Thomas Nixichron. It is HUGE. And really requires its own display table! I made 2 of these behemoths and the second one is for sale without tubes. Contact me if you’re interested.

Michael Barile

BadNixie.com LLC

Ahhh....LED’s turned off, refreshing!  Click on the below image and watch the Ziggurat in action

Below is a small glimpse of the build process, specifically the fabrication of the custom colon towers before polishing. My idea was to design and build a tower that was in keeping with the shape of this most uniquely shaped Nixie tube and, at the same time, not detract from the beauty of the tube or the overall design of the enclosure. I get a kick out of designing and building colon towers where others seem to not place a lot of importance on them. There’s a lot of sameness in Nixie clock enclosures these days and the colon tower can, I think, set a clock apart from the rest. Case in point: our MOD-SIX_7971 clock.

Gun drilled, bored, and tapped while still in bar stock form

Fabricated a special bracket to hold the piece while shaping on the disc sander

Hand and vibrator sanded to raw final shape

Used protective work gloves since pieces become very hot during sanding and shaping

Dry fitting NE-2’s before sending towers off to the polisher

Tapered the openings with a counter sink to effectively make the lighted NE-2 appear a larger in diameter than it really is.

Close up of the final shaped oval with the rear access panel in the background

Now, for some dirty stuff:

Done in Copper Penny and Polished Black