I found an old photobucket account of mine to put a kitty picture in for another thread, and it had an album in from when I put together a nixie tube clock, so I figured there might be a few other geeks here that might find it interesting.
Nixie tubes are sort of like vacuum tubes except they're filled with a gas like neon, and you have several cathodes in them, in this case 10, one for each number and when current is applied to that particular cathode it glows. You've probaly seen nixie tubes before in old movies.
This is one of the four Soviet surplus nixie tubes that came with the clock kit. You can see the cathodes sandwiched on top of one another inside. The top number is the tube type and the bottom number is the manufacture date I think Sept. 1988.
Next we have the printed circuit board where all the various compnents go.
The first part put on was the chip to power the nixie tubes. This was an SMT (Surface Mount Technology) chip meaning the pins rest on top of the circuit board rather than going through it. They're a bit more tricky to solder.
Next the completed component side.
Nixie tube side.
And finally the completed clock.
So there you go, electronic assembly with SacrificialLoon.