I photoshopped it a bit to clean it up and make it green, and make the silver really pop, then I printed it on photo paper and glued it to a thin piece of cardboard from the back of a note pad using Mod Podge cause it’s easy to spread. Then I tried covering the front of it with mod podge to seal it so it wouldn’t run when wet, but the mod podge looked like it was going to dry opaque, so I wiped that off with a damp towel and surprsingly the ink didn’t run at all.
Then I took one of those liquid gold pens and went over the various gold elements on the board and drew in my IC legs, and then used a black magic marker to clean up the tabs on the bottom a bit since I didn’t make the area between the tab dark enough compared to the gold when I printed it. I also used black marker to make the mounting holes and screws look a little better.
The gold pen liked to run a lot though so I ended up having to wipe stuff down again and again so it came out a bit messy. I figured out by the end that the best thing to do is pump the pen once on another sheet of paper to release the ink which will often make a big puddle, and then draw a bit on there and then take it to your circuit board and do quick light strokes for the IC legs to make them thin.
But it looks fine messy. Looks more realistic, and nobody’ll look that close anyway.
I’ll post more shots when I add the little bits to simulate IC’s capacitors and nixie tubes. I’m gonna make the nixe tubes with little bits of clear hose.
Looks pretty good, an inexpensive alternative too.
Question though. Not trying to jack your thread but what if any known purpose do these circut boards pose? I found the link to them under equipment, but it just says what they came from.
Yeah, well since there’s no chance of my getting one of those calculators, I’d rather do this than use a board that looks wrong.
And as for your question, I’ve read that the best guess is that they were supposed to be like geiger counters to tell you how screwed you were if the pack sprung a leak.
FYI the board isn’t all that green in person, more like an ugly brown green as pictured… It’s a transparent coat of green lacquer over a burgundy/rust/brown colored phenolic PC board…
They "look "like a gadget that might do something important… Pure movie magic to sell the costume…
And in another thread on here there was one someone built which was brown. And another person made one which is purple, and a relica being sold is halfway between brown and purple.
Plus I didn’t think the original color looked nice when printed out. So… artist’s license!
I’ve glued on some bits of foamboard and wire to simulate the IC’s and resistors, and created my nixie tubes from two different diameters of pipe and glued some wires in there. Didn’t have any white wire. I’ll just tuck the black behind the red and green.
Not sure what to put inside the tubes yet. Christmas bulbs won’t fit, the bases are too large and I can’t remove them from the base. Maybe I’ll just strip some wire and form it into some kinda shape and stick that in there.
Now, does anyone know where I can find litle caps for the end of the tubes? I don’t want to buy whole mess of glue sticks or something to get the caps.
Very cool looking board! I wonder if clear tape would stick to the ‘chips’ to make them glossy?
And how about these for inside the nixies? Print & cut out.
Cut out, roll into a tube, and slot them inside, then tuck the wires inside!
For the caps, you could add a narrow strip of black electrical tape to the top of the tube, and maybe use self-adhesive rubber pads (like for underneath ornaments & such) or rubber grommets - those little black donut shapes things sold in electrical component storesfor running wires through.
Actually - come to think of it - the simplest way would be to just use black heatshrink tubing! Short (1/4" ?) lengths, once heated the tubing will shrink and create a ‘cap’. Would just need to find some that’ll fit over the nixie tube.
I guess I could just grab some nixie tube pics off google and make something I can print out to stick in there, but I was hoping for more of a 3d look.
As for the IC’s, I’m gonna be printing out some labels for them. I’ll probably use photo paper, so they’ll be glossy.
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Actually, after looking at more nixie tube pics on google, it seems for some reason some of them chose to make numbers similar to those LED displays.
I am a nixie tube purist though. I love the look of the curved number ones.
Oh… and about the caps. I was thinking about it while out shopping and it occured to me that the caps weren’t really caps at all. They’re just bits of tube that are stuck over the end. So I guess your heat shrink tubing idea is along the right lines, but I’ll probably use regular tubing cause it’s cheaper to buy a foot of that than to buy giant heat shrink tubes I think.
Well, I tried putting little cylinders of paper in there with nixie tube graphics on them, but it looked crappy. Guess I’ll have to get some wire and bend it or find some other solution I’ll be happy with.
[edit]
Aha, I’ve got it. I have some solder, which I’m going to be using to solder my light circuit together. I’ll take some of that, and bend it into some number shapes. That, with some black paper behind it should give me the realistic appearance I seek.
All Sanyo’s I have seen don’t use nixies they use VF tubes, with a reverse silhouette of the number area… There is some speculation that there might have been some true nixie tubes used at some point or on the Minolta rebrand…
But most of them will have the reverse silhouette of the number on a dark/medium gray insert in the tube…
Like these seen below from a different same era Sanyo calculator…
Made a bunch of labels from one of the calculator reference photos. Required quite a bit of cleanup becuse of the image compression and poor lighting, but they came out nice in the end.
And yes, I put the stickers on the top set of IC’s on upside down. I didn’t realise it until it was too late. They’ll be hidden behind the leather strap on the holster anyway.
Also glued on a coiled cable I got off an old in-car CD player which had this thing you stuck in the tape player to make it work. Wasn’t planning to be using that ever again.
