If you have another power supply that's around 20V, such as a laptop power supply, you can put it in-series with your 160V supply. If you get 140V instead of 180V, just switch the polarity. Of course, you can only do this with a supply this is *ungrounded*. Other option is to put a few 9V batteries in series with the 160V supply.
You are right on the edge at 160V; the display may or may not ionize consistently. It's very important to have a series resistor to limit the current, or use a power-supply that has a built-in current-limit. I believe those displays run around 300uA per segment for non-multiplexed operation. As long as the current is kept to a safe value (from datasheet), you wont harm a nixie/panaplex running at a higher voltage. For basic testing, a single resistor is OK, but be careful because current is proportional to surface area; a decimal-point or colon will use much less current than a segment for a number, so it needs a higher resistance. When you have figured-out the pinout, and want to make it display something, you will need a resistor (or current-limiter) for each segment. DONT use a single anode resistor to limit the current for multiple segments. If you do, the more segments you turn on , the dimmer they will be. I highly recommend that you get another power supply with a higher output voltage. A few years ago I designed my own nixie/dekatron power supply with current-limiting, and posted about it on this group. There's also a good HV supply mentioned in this group within the past 1-2 weeks. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/4accfb88-592e-45b6-9c21-96d25cf407da%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
