Heathkit Question

[Ralph Farr]

Hi all,
I have a quick question I was wondering if someone might be able to
answer. What is the standard light bulb number for the 5V lamps in a
Heathkit GC-1195/1197 clock. They are 5V miniature wedge type light
bulbs that are used for the display segments. I guess this could be a
proprietary Heathkit part, but I was hoping maybe someone had changed
these and maybe knew if there was a standard bulb equivalent (the
Heathkit part number is 412-621. Thanks and I do appreciate any help.

Ralph Farr

 

[Jerry G.]

What you should do is see if you can get a Newark or equivalent catalogue
and carefully go through it. There are hundreds of different types of these
small lamps. I am sure that your lamps are of some standard. I doubt very
much that Heath had their own made, especially in the time that they were
around.

If there are any electronic suppliers in your area, which you can check to
verify in your yellow pages, pay them a visit with a sample of a lamp. You
can try Radio Shack, or a TV service place, but these would be very limited.

If you know the voltage and current rating of the lamp, you can probably
substitute it and also install new sockets to match. This is too much of a
hassle for something that is standard.

--

Greetings,

Jerry Greenberg GLG Technologies GLG
=========================================
WebPage http://www.zoom-one.com
Electronics http://www.zoom-one.com/electron.htm
=========================================


"Ralph Farr" <rfarr@preserves.worldspice.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.1a10150598804f6c989688@news.wnm.net...
Hi all,
I have a quick question I was wondering if someone might be able to
answer. What is the standard light bulb number for the 5V lamps in a
Heathkit GC-1195/1197 clock. They are 5V miniature wedge type light
bulbs that are used for the display segments. I guess this could be a
proprietary Heathkit part, but I was hoping maybe someone had changed
these and maybe knew if there was a standard bulb equivalent (the
Heathkit part number is 412-621. Thanks and I do appreciate any help.

Ralph Farr

 

[Neil]

They sound like a standard wedge base 5v lamp. Can you scan or photo this,
and I will match.
Kim
"Ralph Farr" <rfarr@preserves.worldspice.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.1a10150598804f6c989688@news.wnm.net...

Hi all,
I have a quick question I was wondering if someone might be able to
answer. What is the standard light bulb number for the 5V lamps in a
Heathkit GC-1195/1197 clock. They are 5V miniature wedge type light
bulbs that are used for the display segments. I guess this could be a
proprietary Heathkit part, but I was hoping maybe someone had changed
these and maybe knew if there was a standard bulb equivalent (the
Heathkit part number is 412-621. Thanks and I do appreciate any help.

Ralph Farr

 

[Jim shedden]

Ralph Farr <rfarr@preserves.worldspice.net> wrote in message news:<MPG.1a10150598804f6c989688@news.wnm.net>...

Hi all,
I have a quick question I was wondering if someone might be able to
answer. What is the standard light bulb number for the 5V lamps in a
Heathkit GC-1195/1197 clock. They are 5V miniature wedge type light
bulbs that are used for the display segments. I guess this could be a
proprietary Heathkit part, but I was hoping maybe someone had changed
these and maybe knew if there was a standard bulb equivalent (the
Heathkit part number is 412-621. Thanks and I do appreciate any help.

Ralph Farr

Hi Ralf,

I built one of those clocks a long time ago and it is currently
lounging on my "to play with" pile. It was a great conversation piece,
and always drew comments.

Those little bulbs are problematic. I've had the clock for years and
they get loose in the socket, or burn out at different times. I'm
planning on replacing them with high brightness L.E.D.'s. You could
measure the lamp voltage with the photocell light (I think I remember
the intensity increasing with room light) and calculate an appropriate
value of series resistance for the LED. Glue it into the segment,
wire it to the board with soldered connections and you are done for
probably a few decades. I did illuminate a segment red, and it looked
great (keep the LED at the back of the bulb hole so the segment can
spread the light). I'd love to see it in blue, but then you get pretty
expensive.

Illuminate a segment for yourself with a LED before you commit to
hacking it up. If you use multiple LEDs per segment, I'm sure you can
make the thing overly bright.

As I said, it is waiting for me to try and I have no final report. For
me, if it doesn't work out, I'll trash the clock anyway. I'm done
playing bulb-boy.

That clock used to throw off some warmth from the linear regulator.
This should save some power as well.

Now, if you could only add the "atomic clock" circuit so the thing
sets its own time on power outage...

Good Luck,

Jim

 

[Ralph Farr]

In article <b2bb7a22.0311060520.3e53ed5d@posting.google.com>,
james.shedden@baesystems.com says...

Ralph Farr <rfarr@preserves.worldspice.net> wrote in message news:<MPG.1a10150598804f6c989688@news.wnm.net>...
Hi all,
I have a quick question I was wondering if someone might be able to
answer. What is the standard light bulb number for the 5V lamps in a
Heathkit GC-1195/1197 clock. They are 5V miniature wedge type light
bulbs that are used for the display segments. I guess this could be a
proprietary Heathkit part, but I was hoping maybe someone had changed
these and maybe knew if there was a standard bulb equivalent (the
Heathkit part number is 412-621. Thanks and I do appreciate any help.

Ralph Farr

Hi Ralf,

I built one of those clocks a long time ago and it is currently
lounging on my "to play with" pile. It was a great conversation piece,
and always drew comments.

Those little bulbs are problematic. I've had the clock for years and
they get loose in the socket, or burn out at different times. I'm
planning on replacing them with high brightness L.E.D.'s. You could
measure the lamp voltage with the photocell light (I think I remember
the intensity increasing with room light) and calculate an appropriate
value of series resistance for the LED. Glue it into the segment,
wire it to the board with soldered connections and you are done for
probably a few decades. I did illuminate a segment red, and it looked
great (keep the LED at the back of the bulb hole so the segment can
spread the light). I'd love to see it in blue, but then you get pretty
expensive.

Illuminate a segment for yourself with a LED before you commit to
hacking it up. If you use multiple LEDs per segment, I'm sure you can
make the thing overly bright.

As I said, it is waiting for me to try and I have no final report. For
me, if it doesn't work out, I'll trash the clock anyway. I'm done
playing bulb-boy.

That clock used to throw off some warmth from the linear regulator.
This should save some power as well.

Now, if you could only add the "atomic clock" circuit so the thing
sets its own time on power outage...

Good Luck,

Jim

Thanks for your reply Jim - I had never thought about using LED's but

that is something I would definitely consider now.

Ralph

 

[James Sweet]

Thanks for your reply Jim - I had never thought about using LED's but
that is something I would definitely consider now.

Ralph

Seems it would kinda lose some of it's vintage charm if you did that,
incandescent segments are something you don't see much these days.

 

[Bob M.]

Yeah, and the reason you don't SEE many of them any more is that they keep
burning out!

Perhaps the way to keep the vintage stuff original would be to put a small
value resistor in series with the bulbs so they last longer. They'd be
dimmer, but put it on a shelf near the ceiling where it's darker anyway and
maybe no one will notice.

Bob M.
======
"James Sweet" <jamessweet@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:Rbyqb.131661$Tr4.337858@attbi_s03...

Thanks for your reply Jim - I had never thought about using LED's but
that is something I would definitely consider now.

Ralph

Seems it would kinda lose some of it's vintage charm if you did that,
incandescent segments are something you don't see much these days.

 

[James Sweet]

"Bob M." <xxxxx@yyyy.zzz> wrote in message
news:nNGdnd0VhYIaQzeiRVn-sQ@comcast.com...

Yeah, and the reason you don't SEE many of them any more is that they keep
burning out!

Perhaps the way to keep the vintage stuff original would be to put a small
value resistor in series with the bulbs so they last longer. They'd be
dimmer, but put it on a shelf near the ceiling where it's darker anyway
and
maybe no one will notice.

Bob M.

Well yeah, I didn't say incandecent was very practical, but it's cool none
the less. Someone else mentioned this unit has a photocell to dim it when
the room is dark, one could probably just put a variable resistor across or
in series with this to adjust the max brightness, dimming it 20% would
extend lamp life considerably, but then if you get a large quantity of
replacement lamps it'd be pretty easy to just replace them when they burn
out, or group relamp the segments that see the most use.

 

[Random Electron]

Hi

You can go a long way to drive the life of the bulb up with two
resistors. Put one resistor in series with the bulb to knock down the
applied voltage. The other resistor is put in parallel across the switch
to put just a little current through the filament when it is supposed to
be off. It should just glow faint red. By doing this, the inrush current
is reduced since the filament is already hot. Inrush current is what
kills the bulbs.

Regards





"James Sweet" <jamessweet@hotmail.com> wrote in
news:8tBqb.132610$Tr4.339531@attbi_s03:

"Bob M." <xxxxx@yyyy.zzz> wrote in message
news:nNGdnd0VhYIaQzeiRVn-sQ@comcast.com...
Yeah, and the reason you don't SEE many of them any more is that they
keep burning out!

Perhaps the way to keep the vintage stuff original would be to put a
small value resistor in series with the bulbs so they last longer.
They'd be dimmer, but put it on a shelf near the ceiling where it's
darker anyway
and
maybe no one will notice.

Bob M.

Well yeah, I didn't say incandecent was very practical, but it's cool
none the less. Someone else mentioned this unit has a photocell to dim
it when the room is dark, one could probably just put a variable
resistor across or in series with this to adjust the max brightness,
dimming it 20% would extend lamp life considerably, but then if you
get a large quantity of replacement lamps it'd be pretty easy to just
replace them when they burn out, or group relamp the segments that see
the most use.

 

[Jim shedden]

Ralph Farr <rfarr@preserves.worldspice.net> wrote in message > >

Thanks for your reply Jim - I had never thought about using LED's but
that is something I would definitely consider now.

Ralph

Sorry on the mis-type of your name.

The control chip is, apparently, National MM5387AA/N

Can't vouch for the source, but here you go:
http://www.chipdocs.com/pndecoder/datasheets/NSC/MM5387AAN.html

Jim

 

[Jim shedden]

Ralph Farr <rfarr@preserves.worldspice.net> wrote in message > >

Thanks for your reply Jim - I had never thought about using LED's but
that is something I would definitely consider now.

Ralph

Sorry on the mis-type of your name.

The control chip is, apparently, National MM5387AA/N

Can't vouch for the source, but here you go:
http://www.chipdocs.com/pndecoder/datasheets/NSC/MM5387AAN.html

Jim

 

[Roy J. Tellason]

Random Electron wrote:

Hi

You can go a long way to drive the life of the bulb up with two
resistors. Put one resistor in series with the bulb to knock down the
applied voltage. The other resistor is put in parallel across the switch
to put just a little current through the filament when it is supposed to
be off. It should just glow faint red. By doing this, the inrush current
is reduced since the filament is already hot. Inrush current is what
kills the bulbs.

I did something like this once...

I'd been playing around with LM3915 bargraph display chips, and after getting
some LEDs going, I wanted to use incandescent bulbs. So I built a driver
board, and across each switching transistor I put a 100 ohm resistor. When
the power was on you could just *barely* see the filament glowing. Never had
a bulb burn out, either. (These were #47 bulbs, for whatever that's
worth.)

 

[Ralph Farr]

In article <b2bb7a22.0311061706.a051104@posting.google.com>,
james.shedden@baesystems.com says...

Ralph Farr <rfarr@preserves.worldspice.net> wrote in message

Thanks for your reply Jim - I had never thought about using LED's but
that is something I would definitely consider now.

Ralph

Sorry on the mis-type of your name.

The control chip is, apparently, National MM5387AA/N

Can't vouch for the source, but here you go:
http://www.chipdocs.com/pndecoder/datasheets/NSC/MM5387AAN.html

Jim

Thanks everyone for the replies - it has been a very interesting

discussion. I do like the vintage light bulb segments, but it would be
great to improve reliability. I was thinking about possibly using clear
white LED's to replace the bulbs. I haven't worked with any white light
emitting LED's - are there any as bright as a miniature incandescentt
lamp or would it take several to equal the same brightness?

 

[Jim shedden]

"James Sweet" <jamessweet@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<Rbyqb.131661$Tr4.337858@attbi_s03>...

Thanks for your reply Jim - I had never thought about using LED's but
that is something I would definitely consider now.

Ralph

Seems it would kinda lose some of it's vintage charm if you did that,
incandescent segments are something you don't see much these days.

Hi James,

I read the Heathkit circuit description and it basically says the full
lamp voltage is 5 volts regulated and will dim from there. So if you
want to keep it vintage, I would look into Chicago Miniature lamp #86
available from 'www.mouser.com' as p/n 606-CM86, they are T1-3/4 wedge
base at 6.3 volts rated 20,000 hrs.

That seems to indicate that they will last over 2 years. In my
experience, whenever anyone commented on the clock and I said I had
built it, the next minute the time was in Klingon (When all were
looking, of course).

The sockets seem to be problematic as well, many times I opened it to
relamp, and it was just the way the segment was pushing on the bulb.
In my opinion it is a poor and frustrating design.

Sorry I didn't post the p/n right away, but I actually had to open the
clock and measure the bulb. I'm lousy at judging dimensions.

LED's, that's for me!

This thread is going to make me break out the soldering iron. I have a
few "white" led's that could be tried. I guess if you get the vintage
color that you like the only difference would be that the LEDs may
turn on and off more abruptly. You could probably ramp the voltage on
the flashing colon to make this unnoticeable.

For some real fun put an RGB tri-color LED and drive circuit in. You
could probaly match the color of the lamps then. See

http://www.superbrightleds.com/TriColor%20LED.htm

You could program it to randomly change colors every 5 minutes. Now
that would be a conversation piece! It would look great right next to
the lava lamp. Burn some incense, put on your John McLaughlin albums
(you know, the big black CD's). Let people worry about your sanity,
maybe a vacation will be suggested!

Regards,
Jim

 

[Ralph Farr]

In article <b2bb7a22.0311070542.18796fbc@posting.google.com>,
james.shedden@baesystems.com says...

"James Sweet" <jamessweet@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<Rbyqb.131661$Tr4.337858@attbi_s03>...

Thanks for your reply Jim - I had never thought about using LED's but
that is something I would definitely consider now.

Ralph

Seems it would kinda lose some of it's vintage charm if you did that,
incandescent segments are something you don't see much these days.

Hi James,

I read the Heathkit circuit description and it basically says the full
lamp voltage is 5 volts regulated and will dim from there. So if you
want to keep it vintage, I would look into Chicago Miniature lamp #86
available from 'www.mouser.com' as p/n 606-CM86, they are T1-3/4 wedge
base at 6.3 volts rated 20,000 hrs.

That seems to indicate that they will last over 2 years. In my
experience, whenever anyone commented on the clock and I said I had
built it, the next minute the time was in Klingon (When all were
looking, of course).

The sockets seem to be problematic as well, many times I opened it to
relamp, and it was just the way the segment was pushing on the bulb.
In my opinion it is a poor and frustrating design.

Sorry I didn't post the p/n right away, but I actually had to open the
clock and measure the bulb. I'm lousy at judging dimensions.

LED's, that's for me!

This thread is going to make me break out the soldering iron. I have a
few "white" led's that could be tried. I guess if you get the vintage
color that you like the only difference would be that the LEDs may
turn on and off more abruptly. You could probably ramp the voltage on
the flashing colon to make this unnoticeable.

For some real fun put an RGB tri-color LED and drive circuit in. You
could probaly match the color of the lamps then. See

http://www.superbrightleds.com/TriColor%20LED.htm

You could program it to randomly change colors every 5 minutes. Now
that would be a conversation piece! It would look great right next to
the lava lamp. Burn some incense, put on your John McLaughlin albums
(you know, the big black CD's). Let people worry about your sanity,
maybe a vacation will be suggested!

Regards,
Thanks Jim for actually opening up the clock and checking out the bulb

for me - I didn't mean for you to go to that much trouble! I really do
appreciate it though. Are these the ratings for the original heathkit
lamps - 6.3V .2A or is the original no longer produced? I was just
wondering since the clock outputs 5V to the bulbs - I guess that was to
dim the output a little and possible prolong bulb life. Thanks again for
your help.

Ralph

 

[James Sweet]

"Ralph Farr" <rfarr@preserves.worldspice.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.1a1557e3c6d4f75498968a@news.wnm.net...

In article <b2bb7a22.0311061706.a051104@posting.google.com>,
james.shedden@baesystems.com says...
Ralph Farr <rfarr@preserves.worldspice.net> wrote in message

Thanks for your reply Jim - I had never thought about using LED's but
that is something I would definitely consider now.

Ralph

Sorry on the mis-type of your name.

The control chip is, apparently, National MM5387AA/N

Can't vouch for the source, but here you go:
http://www.chipdocs.com/pndecoder/datasheets/NSC/MM5387AAN.html

Jim

Thanks everyone for the replies - it has been a very interesting
discussion. I do like the vintage light bulb segments, but it would be
great to improve reliability. I was thinking about possibly using clear
white LED's to replace the bulbs. I haven't worked with any white light
emitting LED's - are there any as bright as a miniature incandescentt
lamp or would it take several to equal the same brightness?

They're quiet bright, but generally in a rather tight beam, also they have a
much higher color temperature, they look more like fluorescent light.