The displays are socketed, and can be removed with some careful wiggling. Our store does also sell the displays separately, so there’s no issue there.
The displays are a bit challenging to drive, since the different segments take different voltages and currents, and the Alpha Clock Five multiplexes the displays to spread the cost of the drivers amongst five displays. You could in principle extend the multiplexing to three additional units, at the cost of some challenging wiring and a ~40% hit in brightness.
You are of course welcome to use the design of the Alpha Clock Five as a starting point (it’s a fully open source project– the schematics, circuit board designs, and part lists are all available for you to play with), and design a fully independent project. Another approach that you might consider would be to get two Alpha Clock Five (basic edition) kits, and connect them with a ribbon cable. The default firmware supports daisy chained display, and you could play with the firmware to make a stand-alone version that forms a single 8-digit clock. (The circuit boards can be tiled side to side seamlessly.)
If you contact customer service, we can also pack a custom kit for you that includes just the number of displays that you want to purchase, and we do sell the individual components as well.
