My concern is that over time as the tubes age your HV supply voltage might be too low to ensure proper ionization. If it's not adjustable, you can boost it with a series DC supply such as a wall-wart transformer or a small isolated DCDC converter. Anything from +12 to +24 should work fine, and the current is pretty low (12mA).
Once you get the HV supply resolved, you will be able to get more current thru the tubes. BUT......you may want to stay with 8mA. From the photo, the tubes glow nicely. Tube wearout is an exponential function of current, so staying at the lower currents is better for longer lifetime. At some point, the current could be too low and you might see cathode poisoning, but that's reversible. My gut feeling is that 8mA of pulsed current should be fine. So, are you using rectified AC-mains as your DC supply ? No worries, I've done that on several clocks and it can be done safely with proper circuit design. On Thursday, October 26, 2023 at 7:28:18 AM UTC-7 Craig Garnett wrote: > The ongoing project of mine is coming on nicely but I need some > reassurance with the way I'm driving the Z570s. > > There are two banks of 6 multiplexed tubes, from what I see from the > datasheet these should run at 2ma static or up to 12ma as a 1 in 6 > multiplex but that is using google to translate from the datasheet's German. > > The problem is that even with a 1K anode resistor I can't quite get 8mA > from a 170V supply. > The photo shows two tubes, the left is static at 2mA and the right is > multiplexed at just under 8mA with a 1mS on time from a 170V supply and 1K > anode resistor.. > > Is this ok or could I do it a better way? > > Thanks > Craig > -- 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 neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/c1a02380-23ad-4111-b7ee-a038ba4d7adan%40googlegroups.com.
