Numitron Tube Watch With 3D Printed Case

As far as fashions concerned, wearable tech is vogue, and with the rise of smart-watches, more functional as well. On the other hand, digital watches are still incredibly trendy but really haven’t changed much since the late 19^th century (yep, there were digital-mechanical pocket watches back then too). With the popularity of 3D printers, more people are looking to create their own unique style of timepieces, such as German inventor Johannes, who turned to Numitron tubes to tell time.

Numitron tubes are cut-down version of Nixie tubes but instead of having a wire-mesh anode with a cold-cathode display, uses a seven-segmented indicator commonly found on digital meters and clocks. The thing is, those indicators are housed in gas-purged glass tubes with nine pins to connect to standard IC sockets. The actually look like tiny old-style vacuum tubes, giving them a ‘steam-punk’ look. Johannes soldered a pair of those tubes to a couple of PCB boards at 90⁰ angles in order to keep the watch thin. He housed the electronics in a transparent PLA 3D printed enclosure that leaves much to be desired. Still, the watch is unique and certainly one of a kind and Johannes plans to refine the case to be more durable in the near future (hopefully he changes the color as well). See more here..