My vote is to play it safe and find or make a supply that gives you 2.5kV. I was going to recommend a series dropping resistor, along with the 3kV supply, but I dont think that is a good idea. The reason is that while the resistor will provide a voltage drop at *nominal* current, it wont do anything at low or zero current. Given NIMO tubes are expensive and rare, I wouldn't risk applying higher-than-spec voltages, just in case it might do something unexpected. For example, I've seen tin whiskers develop in laptop CCFL driver boards. Literally a microscopic metal hair that grows in a high electric field. Even at lower voltages, I've seen evidence suggesting this happened in my IN-1 nixies.
High voltage zener diodes (~160V) might work but be very careful about leakage current; you may end up with the same paranoia I have about using resistors mentioned above. If you do use zeners, I would use a 'bleeder' resistor from NIMO-anode to GND to drain zener leakage current, such as a few 22Meg in-series. -- 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/829276d1-0644-4a4a-938b-da3e8da77d05%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
