I took a little break from the VFD Clock to work on the Portal Weighted Storage Cube. Paint is drying, and it's supposed to rain tomorrow. So I'll probably have to take a day or two off from painting and sanding. There's no better time than the present to get back to work on the VFD Clock.

I got my new AC Filament Driver boards in a few weeks ago. They've just been sitting on my desk.



This is the second version of the AC Filament Driver Board. I made the first version not expecting it to work. It worked great, but after playing around with it for a bit, I realized that it would be better if I moved the DC input header. I made a tweak to the design and ordered nine more boards. I need nine boards for the clock, but as it turned out, I only have eight LM9022 drivers left. I'll have to make eight new boards, and stick with one of the old boards.

I placed the surface mount components and baked them in my oven.



I soldered the rest of the through-hole components.



Here's the difference between V1.0 and V1.1. I moved the DC input header to the top.



I connected each one to a 4.5V battery pack and connected my scope. That's a pretty good looking AC-biased square wave running at about 45kHz.



I hope they do the trick. If these work, then I'm pretty much finished with the clock. I'll just have to make a few small tweaks to the PCB and then I can order it.

See this project from start to finish:
More VFDs!!!
VFD Breakouts
Large VFD Clock - Part I
VFD AC Filament Driver
Large VFD Clock - Part II
VFD AC Filament Driver V1.1
Large VFD Clock - Part III
Large VFD Clock - Part IV
Large VFD Clock - Part V