Like the other thread about the FLW clock, I missed the fact that this driver also has rail-to-rail drive with a high-voltage supply pin (76 volts). That will clamp any leakage current from the nixie tubes, so a bleeder is not needed. ESD structures in the IC are designed to clamp hundreds of milliamps (for a brief time), so a few uA will not do any harm.
What was your anode supply voltage when you measured the leakage of your nixies ? That will give us an idea how much of a voltage drop your nixie has when it's just starting to ionize. My rough guess is your tube will have at least 125 volts across it as it just starts to faintly glow. If you clamp your driver at 70 volts, you should be able to run your anodes up to +195V, which is more than enough. 170 to 180 is typical. As you alluded to, your actual leakage current thru the driver chip might be far less than the 6uA you measured with your DMM. -- 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/b8c0c582-17c2-4454-984e-5f74f3f8f3a7%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
